| Galaki said: What's currently the best-bang-for-your-bucks? So far, I came up with the following, $269.97AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz / 2MB Cache / 1000MHz (2000 MT/s) / Dual-Core (Windsor) / Socket AM2 / Processor with FanGet eithe AMD or Intel but keep in mind one thing: This decision will carry over for whatever CPU upgrade you may plan to have in the future. That means, once you buy AMD, you stick with AMD, lest you don't mind swapping mainboards all the time. $59.97 x2 XFX GeForce 7300 GT / 512MB DDR2 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / DVI / VGA / HDTV / Video CardAs others have noted, that card's pretty old, and you are better off with a decent single card instead of an SLI solution, especially when there are so few games that support it, and those that do don't deliver double the performance - far from it.
EVGA nForce 590 SLI NVIDIA Socket AM2 (940) ATX Motherboard / Audio / PCI Express / SLI Ready / Dual Gigabit LAN / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAIDNeed SLI? No? Ditch this and get a leaner AM2.
OCZ SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)Nothing wrong with this, but you could probably save some money by getting budget RAM at the same speed - this is one component you can spare the overclocking, so you don't need quality.
Ultra / X-Finity / 600-Watt / ATX / Dual 80mm Fan / SATA-Ready / SLI Ready / Black / Power Supply500W is ample for what you need.
ThermalTake Tsunami Series Aluminum ATX Mid-Tower Case with Top USB, Firewire and Audio Ports - BlackOuch. But if that floats your proverbial boat... I'd save 100 bucks and just get a Coolermaster Elite which costs around 40$ and is a surprisingly well-built and thought-out case with filters and even side ventilation for your GPU.
Western Digital / Caviar SE16 / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / SATA-300 / OEM / Hard DriveGet two 2 HDDs and run RAID 5 - get the best of both worlds.
Logitech G15 Gaming KeyboardOverkill. A Saitek Eclipse II or a regular keyboard with a Wolf Claw may be a better option.
Logitech G5 Laser Gaming MouseOverkill. A Razer Diamondback will deliver what you need. Not as good as the G5, but it's not a night-and-day difference. Also, with the money you save on the Diamondback, you can buy a decent gamepad as well! $239.97 Hyvision by Megavision MV220 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 5ms, 1000:1, WSXGA+ 1680 x 1050, DVI, VGA, Component Video, Black, Integrated SpeakersLCDs are built with a native resolution in mind; running anything in another resolution tends to make the image on your monitor look like something a bit worse than smeared poo. Plus, 1680x1050 isn't exactly a low resolution - especially with that graphics card you have up there. You will either have to crank your game settings down to run those resolutions, or crank your resolution down which makes everything look like poo anyhow. Unless you plan to really upgrade that graphics card, your games won't look stellar.
I could use old/existing parts that I got and cut the last 4 items off the list and comes out with total $886.56 Note that the prices are listed in CND and priced after rebate from tigerdirect. (Probably several hundreds more if I didn't count rebate) I want to spent the least amount possible but not suffer from performce cut too much. Of course, I won't want it so cheap that I ended up with some crappy celeron system. I also noticed that I I buy pre-built system, it seems cheaper but the parts aren't exactly what I want. I've always prefer building my own computers and been doing that starting my 3rd computer since the P2 age. I am open to suggestion for barebone builds also. What I am using the computer for,
Gaming and encoding videos are the 2 main things that suck the computer dry, IMO. That's why I picked 2x SLI video cards. I also tend to multitask. Most likely, encoding videos in the background. Watching stream videos and browsing. I would probably have chosen intel build but the cost for the same performance is a lot more. I am open to all suggestions, though. |
Gaming? XP. Period. End of story.
Next year may be Vista's year, but for now nothing beats XP for gaming.
/opinion
