Need PRO GAMER advice

Hey guys,
The moment I found this forum board I fell in love.

I am currently planning a new computer system, but have some big doubts in my mind.

I am a gamming junkie, I love to play. My question is, if you could build the ultimate game based computer, what would it consist of?

AMD or Intel?
Dual channel DDR mother board?
what motherboard chipset should I look for??
I know alot about that amd setups, and have a buddy with a Nforce2 chipset AMD board, but AMd seems to be a little behind in speed and FSB compaired to intel. So now I am doubting myself.

Will I benefit from watercooling? Or is that mostly for guys that overclock?

Can anyone help a noobie out? Thanks guys


___________________
Mystique

Water Cooling helps overclocking and lower noise, though the stock Intel HSF's are quiet to begin with.

I think a p4 or amd computer would both be fine. I would go with DDR instead of RDRAM because I think DDR has much more of a future than RD does.

What size Monitor do you have? What speakers do you own? I think people tend to neglect both these things, but they really enhance your gaming experience. How much do you have to spend?

MystiqueSupra said:

Hey guys,
The moment I found this forum board I fell in love.

I am currently planning a new computer system, but have some big doubts in my mind.

I am a gamming junkie, I love to play. My question is, if you could build the ultimate game based computer, what would it consist of?

AMD or Intel?
Dual channel DDR mother board?
what motherboard chipset should I look for??
I know alot about that amd setups, and have a buddy with a Nforce2 chipset AMD board, but AMd seems to be a little behind in speed and FSB compaired to intel. So now I am doubting myself.

Will I benefit from watercooling? Or is that mostly for guys that overclock?

Can anyone help a noobie out? Thanks guys


___________________
Mystique

Click to expand...

Personally for bang for the buck I would choose AMD, for the fastest current chipset it would be the Nforce2 based board and I would add an XP 2100 T Bred to it , overclock it and hit 2.3 to 2.5 which I believe is equal to a P4 2.5 or so. Like JML said get a good monitor and sound system. Also get a great video card, if you like ATI a 9500 Pro or higher and for Nvidia nothing shy of a Ti4600 My 2 cents worth.

Cisco Kid

Getting a 2100+ and overclocking it would still be a far cry from an 'Ultimate gaming machine'.


I would probably suggest Intel 3.06 only because I know intel
a single 512 DDR ram chip, and liquid cooling to overclock as high as she can go.

your sound. monitor, speakers are what make the experience truly great, 19" seems to be the smallest all the hard core gamers are using these days,

I forget the name of the sound system that is popular in europe. but I am told it is amazing and it is a wonder why more north americans have not moved to it.

Thanks guys for the help so far.
I am full of questions to ask still.

I usually dont play games with sound from my speakers, I have a nice headphone set I use.

I have a flat screen (not LCD) 21" P110 moniter.

I've been looking at a
2.4 P4 512k/533mhz

Is there any 478 socket boards with Nforce chipsets? Also, anyone know of a board that supports dual channel DDR on a socket 478 board?

Someone asked me how much I have to spend on a system. Money isnt the issue. I have enough money to buy what ever I want in a computer system. I just dont want to buy something I know nothing about, or buy something I dont need. I just am looking for a nice mobo and processor...the rest I can handle.

with a good vid card (read that as 9700p or newer) you probably wouldnt be able to see a difference between 2.5ghz amd or 4ghz intel, im not sayin the intel wouldnt be faster or benchmark higher, just that you probably wouldnt SEE it in games. in unreal and 3dmark, the 3.06 p4 and the 3000+ barton were very close at stock settings. for me, i would go with a 2100/1700 tbred b, because i like to overclock, but if i were building a gaming machine for someone else and they wanted the best of the best and damn all costs, it would be a 3.06 with one of those dual channel boards and water or phase change cooling with a 9700pro RIGHT NOW, or the 9800pro when it comes out

does a socket 478 board with dual channel ddr and nforce 2 chipset exist?

no, as far as i know nvidia only makes amd boards

If I could make the ultimate gaming system, there are three things I would be sure to include: dual monitors, RAID, and extra memory. 512 is the minimum to get decent gaming ability right now, so I'd be sure to spend a bit extra and get 1GB.

I'd say go for 2 western digital special edition hard drives in RAID 0 to speed up loading times. If you really feel like spending some extra money, get a RAID pci card that does all of the processing on the card. That way, you don't sacrafice cpu cycles to run your hard drives. Or you could just go with a software solution on the motherboard.

As far as I know, the Nforce2 chipset only gets a benefit from dual channel DDR when you are using onboard video. You don't get a noticeable benefit in memory bandwidth since you are still limited by your front side bus.

Personally, I'm an AMD fan. That's mostly because they tend to be slightly better priced. If you decide to go AMD, I'd say wait for the Bartons with the 400Mhz bus to come out if you can handle waiting a little bit.

As for the water cooling, that really isn't needed. Only overclockers do water cooling. Now you MIGHT want to look into this though, because overclocking your video card and cpu really can make a huge difference at times. Then again, if you have all top-of-the-line stuff, you won't notice that difference.

MystiqueSupra said:

does a socket 478 board with dual channel ddr and nforce 2 chipset exist?

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look at the granite bay boards (asus or gigabyte)

Here's a review of the latest P4 Dual Channel DDR400 board to come out. It's the Asus P4SDX. http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1786&p=1 At the moment I would say that the SiS655 chipset is the best P4 gaming platform you are going to find. The 2 other boards benched in that review, an MSI and a Gigabyte, also look great. Basically, SiS655 spanks Intel's Dual DDR chipset (E7205 or Granite Bay) as well as anything else that gets in it's way. That includes board running Rambus 1066. The key is, of course, support for DDR400.

Anyone one of those SiS655 boards, a P4 3.06, some Corsair XMS (TwinX, Low Latency, or whatever ya like) and an ATI 9700 Pro (or 9800 Pro if you can wait) are the makings of a fantastical gaming rig.

I don't know much about AMD so I won't comment on that beyond saying that nForce2 is clearly the best AMD chipset atm.

Luck!

thanks a bunch guys

just wish I knew as much about computer componants as I do about toyota supras.

To be honest, I'm getting out of my car racing hobby and moving into something more family stay home based. AKA GAMES!
lol
hahahaha

Heres where my money used to go

what motherboard chipset should I look for??

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anything that doesnt have VIA written on it...

if your going AMD I would go with the Nforce2 - Intel I would choose SiS655 over the E7205 it was the first DCDDR chipset to beat the I850E as far as I know.

MystiqueSupra said:

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PLEASE tell me that is a TT Supra and not N/A. TT Supras are my thang Probably the best stock car you could have bought in its time for under $100k. And thats coming from a domestic car nut.


Krusty and deRusett are pretty much right on target. If you get the fastest or second fastest that either AMD or Intel offer you will be fine at stock speeds. You might notice a differnce by upping the FSB for some extra memory bandwidth.


My choices:

top of the line CPU
DDR motherboard w/ 8x AGP and RAID (if not then just get a RAID card) I would go for a MB with a KT400 chipset (dont bother with dual channel DDR yet)
Radeon 9700 (you could get a ti4600 and be fine but its not 'ULTIMATE')
2 120gig Western Digital 8mb hard drives
Fast DVD player and fast 48-52x CDRWs (for burning maps and patches)
Aluminum case for LANs
High power NAME BRAND power supply, no point in skimping.
19"+ CRT
any keyboard
Wireless mouse (get a good one)
5.1 Klipsch speakers (at this price level Klipsch KILLS Logitech, IMHO)

Make a few mods to the case. Like front audio output for headfones.


Air or water cooling is up to you.

If u don't plan to overclock it heavily and don't like to messing around just to cool your comp , i suggest u get that 2.4

amd is definately cheaper but u have the money ,so get that p4 and if can get an OEM one , it will be the SL6RZ which overclock easily at stock to 3+ Ghz

btw , your pc at your sig still rocks ..why u want a new comp ? give me your old one