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BaconTheory

Member
I've been thinking of building a new rig for a while now, and I think it's time that I started to save some money to get it. My current setup has done me well for 2 years, and I only got 3 upgrades, only 1 of which I had to pay for. This rig that I want to build, however, needs to last me for a while (I'm a Junior in high school) and I would like to build it at the end of this year, possibly sooner, to give a me a decent midrange rig that will last me through college. It will be performing important tasks such as office work, graphic design and gaming :p. Alright, so gaming isn't a necessity, but that's one of the reasons for building this rig. So what I've come to ask you guys for are some opinions. I'm mainly looking for advice on the parts I have picked out, along with information about new technologies that I may or may not want to wait for to incorporate into my build. Alright then, on to the parts list!

MSI K8N Neo4-F Motherboard ($80)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU ($190)
2GB Corsair ValueSelect RAM ($110)
Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA HDD ($86)
eVGA GeForce 7800GTX ($470)
I have all other perhiperals
GRAND TOTAL: $936USD

My main concern is obsoletion. I don't want to drop this cash only to find out 2 months after I build it that there is some other product that is better and costs about the same. So if you know of any new technologies that I should wait for, please tell me.

My other concern is pricing. This seems like a good deal for these parts (everything from Newegg) and I just want to make sure that I'm getting a good deal on the stuff I want.
 
Wow that seems really lopsided. You're spending $470 on a graphics card, and $190 for the motherboard and RAM combined.

I would suggest a 7800GT instead, which is still extremely high-end. Check this thread out, scroll down for the Dell deal.

If you want to overclock, your best bets are the EPoX EP-9NPAJ or the DFI LANPARTY NF4-D. Both are relatively cheap anyway.

Can you link to the RAM you're thinking of using? You say you're getting 2GB of it, but I haven't seen any DDR1 kits that low in price. My guess is you meant to say 1GB instead.
Either way, don't expect much from ValueRAM (Unless it happens to be BH-5).
 
That's like..overkill on the video card...it'll even be bottlenecked in your CPU, and even might be too much for "light" gaming.

I'd say move up to a X2 3800+ if your worried about future uses. Just drop down to a 6600GT or 6800, maybe a 6800GT if you can squeeze it in. The X2 3800+ would be great for office work and even graphic encoding and stuff, and if you want it to last through college, the X2 is your best choice.

I'd say maybe get a different motherboard, because you might want to test OCing later on. Get the Epox one, I'm too lazy to look it up, but it's a Epox nForce4 for about $100.

I'd second that recommendation on the HDDs. Most 8MB Cache and 16MB Caches are about the same price, but the 16MB ones give better performance of course.

And yeah, the Corsair Value Ram should be 2x512MB for about $90ish.
 
The Epox board noted by LordDarik would be much better than the MSI. I would suggest any board over the MSI. If funds are short I'd go for the new ASRock ULI1695 board for $69 at Newegg. Also, I just purchased a 200gig 16mb cache Maxtor and it's a good deal on a good drive.
SAPPHIRE Radeon X800GTO2 $297
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) $226
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231020
I would also consider an 939 socket Opteron with a larger cache as opposed to a 3200. If you must have a 3200 then get an OEM at eWiz for $132.95.
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=A64-3200BW
Good luck with whatever you choose.
 
6600GT ack! no way, that's a crippled card (cut pipelines and stuff)

I say swap HDD and mobo and keep everything else. the X2 costs a heck of a lot more and is no better in gaming than the 3200+ (it's actualy worse until they start coming out with multithreaded games...which will be some time)

I'd say go with the 2 cahnges I mentioned and if you feel your rig slowing down from the CPU, dropping in a (by that time) old used X2 of some variety.
 
For the video card, I'd say either a 6800 with w/e letters you want after it or an X800GTO (which can be flashed to X850something or other). A 7800 is waaaaaaaaay overkill for a "decent midrange rig". For the mobo, go with the epox nforce4 ultra thingy. As for HDD, I'd recommend Maxtor or WD over Seagate. I once had a seagate drive that went out on me after a year, then I bought a maxtor and it's lasted me the whole 3 years since then.
 
Actually many people have gotten better scores in benchmarks with their Dual Cores with respect to the 80 series beta forcewares. According to the specs for the actual 88.88 forceware series, it's supposed to actually give much more noticeable benefits in gaming.

Plus he said his office work and stuff is more important then gaming, I rather have a system that can work with almost everything which can last for a while, then get a single core which will give me 10 more fps in gaming for at most for a year.

I'd say the 6600GT should do fine if you aren't planning on playing games too often, if you just buy proper cooling, you may even OC it to get the most out of it.
 
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3524426__7

I'm not sure what benchmarks your talking about, but the above are actual game performance...not synthetic benchmarks (which are great for ego and that's it). If what your talking about is from actual games (like the ones above) I'd love to see them (not being rude, but AFIAK the second core is just idle during gaming...atleast that's the way it is with my xeon rig).

I'd still not get a 6600GT....doesn't matter how often you game, a cards still only gonna pull x fps...I don't game too much but when I do I sure don't want to have crappy performance. Also with high AA/AF the load is also entirely on the video card, and that's what's brought to it's knees...even before the CPU becomes a bottleneck. Now if you play games at 1024x768 then I guess you have a point. But when you play at higher reses and high AA/AF and settings it's a whole new ballgame. (think a 3.0ghz p4 (basicly what I run) is the bottleneck with a 6800U? heck no, from a 9700p to a 6800U I went from 17fps to 68fps in CS:S, same CPU settings. and a 3000+ is much better in games then a 3.0 p4 800mhz FSB
 
What I think is important here is that we lay out some solid choices here and we definitely have done that. BaconTheory will have to decide whether to place the emphasis on the CPU or the video card or to try and strike some kind of balance between them. The only disadvantage to a balanced approach is to really upgrade he'll need to replace 2 components. My personal bias in an unbalanced system would be to put more emphasis on the CPU as I believe there is more to be gained from an X2 than a high end video card, but this seems to run against what BaconTheory indicated in his original equipment list.
 
Well it does depend on which emphasis he wants it on. He could either go with a single core with a good video card or a dual core with a worse video card. The single core would benefit gaming by a lot according to those benchmarks listed in that website above. But then the dual core would be more benficial in everything but gaming.

It's all up to him, I'd recommend the X2 because he's using it for college, and I'd say homework and office work may be more important then gaming to him.

Edit: Just noticed that according to that review by Sharky Extreme, the X2 4800+ can match up to the 4000+ in gaming, pretty much for all 3 games tested. Maybe if they included the X2 4400+ in the review, we'd be able to see if the extra cache really makes that big of a difference in gaming.
 
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darksparkz said:
I'd recommend the X2 because he's using it for college, and I'd say homework and office work may be more important then gaming to him.
As a parent I would certainly hope school work would be more important than games. As someone who know's just a little bit about kids.......maybe.......not? :D
I hope you are correct. Okay, BaconTheory, this is a pop quiz! :p
 
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