New Gaming Computer (screen shots pg5)

[Small_Fryz]

7800GTX will probably outdo a SLI 7800GT.

Get the 4800 or 4400X2 dual core instead of the FX-57. Less fps in games but the dual core kicks arse in multitasking and once games utilise dual core's they will beat FX-57.

2GB of ram is great!, I once saw a test where the RAM timings and quality of ram doesnt make much difference "in the real word" only in benchmarking does it make a bit of difference. Get some nice DDR400 dual channel ones 👍, also at the moment you cant get DDR2 ram for AMD motherboards

 

[donbenni]

Thanks again guys, i got it ordered yesterday, here's the final specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4800+ with HT Tech
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower +550W PSU- Silver
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard
2048MB DDR400 Memory - PC3200 (2x1024)
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
16x DVD-ROM Drive (40x CD-ROM)
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
256MB nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card
Creative Labs T6060 - 5.1 Surround with Subwoofer
Logitech Desktop Keyboard & Optical Mouse
Saitek - Cyborg Evo Joystick
ASUS WL 138G 802.11G/B Wi-Fi PCI Card
1.44MB - 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive
Internal 15-in-1 Memory Card Reader

Came to just under £1800 and i went with Mesh Computers in the end 👍

Thanks again for the guideance, sounds like i'm gonna get just the right machine Will post up benchmarks etc. when i get it (probably Christmas).

 

[Pebb]

Good pick, i know people who brought from Mesh. And they have not been let down, even some clan players. I knew, said they had Mesh PC's and well they were not let down.

Donbenni will you be building your own PC some day.

 

[donbenni]

Well i was debating building this one, but i don't trust myself enough with £1800 worth of parts! The processor is £600 all by itself, and the graphics card is £300. If i made an error, that would be expensive. So i thought it best just to let the nice people at Mesh build it for me. This way i get a completely configured PC ready as soon as it arrives and i don't have the usual worry about which parts are most suited for which motherboards or whatever 👍

 

[Danoff]

The FX57 is pointless unless you have 2 gigs or more of RAM, the Athlon X2 4800+ is good if you are looking for somthing slightly cheaper.

2GBs of ram is worth the expense.

2x 7800GTs is a very good idea, it will deliver a huge amount of graphical power.

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

2GBs of ram is worth the expense??

Look at this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/13/how_much_ram_do_you_really_need/page12.html

 

[donbenni]

2 GB

Still there are situations where more than 1 GB is what you want.

* If you are a professional user, you might need more than 1 GB for really heavy applications.
* If you intend to do heavy multitasking, especially if you have more than one CPU or CPU core. Running RAM intensive games such as World of Warcraft, downloading files via high speed FTP or encrypted protocols, Bittorrent or any P2P program; decompressing large archives and playing large size video files in a window or on second monitor all at the same time can max out your system memory pretty fast - if your CPU can handle it.

Sounds about right for me I will be multitasking a lot, using Photoshop with things like WMP, P2P. I will be getting more than one core in my CPU, so that's good too.
I chose 2G because i didn't want my RAM to be limiting the PC too much. As i couldn't get any higher quality RAM, i thought i'd at least get 2G because my PC at the moment has 1G and i want this new to be a big step up if possible

Anyway, the reason i'm back is that the pc is going to be posted through my letterbox on Wednesday morning, and frankly i'm pretty darn excited. Can't wait to see FarCry (aka Lost) full detail with HDR Will be back with benchmarks on Wednesday (if my parents let me play with it then [unlikely]) or on Sunday (more likely).

 

[VIPFREAK]

Looking at Cyberpowersystem.com

What do you guys thing about these configs? I'd get the Vid card and Mem later.

Mega II Special

Gamer Ultra 7500 SE

AMD ATHLON 64 X2 PCI-E

The goal is to have a good puter that won't be obsolete "as fast" or can easily be upgraded. I want to be able to do graphic and processor intensive stuff like PS, 3D rendering and current games, all for as cheap as possible.

 

[donbenni]

Processor is fine, Sound is fine, HDD is fine if that's all you need. Thing i'd be worry about is that the 2 setups that come with SLI motherboards have quite low powered PSUs. 500W is about what you should be looking at i believe.

I'd take the bottom setup but see if you can get a better PSU and if possible, an upgrade to the 3700+ would create quite a difference due to its higher clock speed but ultimately it's 1MB of L2 cache over the 3500+'s 512KB.

That's just my thoughts though.

 

[VIPFREAK]

Processor is fine, Sound is fine, HDD is fine if that's all you need. Thing i'd be worry about is that the 2 setups that come with SLI motherboards have quite low powered PSUs. 500W is about what you should be looking at i believe.

I'd take the bottom setup but see if you can get a better PSU and if possible, an upgrade to the 3700+ would create quite a difference due to its higher clock speed but ultimately it's 1MB of L2 cache over the 3500+'s 512KB.

That's just my thoughts though.

Thanks for the help Donbenni, so is this better? Do I really need dual Sata hds with RAID? I figure the Vid and Mem together would be another $500

 

[donbenni]

Well, yeah, but that 350W PSU is still possibly too low powered. But if you aren't planning on going SLI for a while i guess it can wait until you do.

You don't need RAID really, but it's a nice thing if you get it. Your choice there

 

[VIPFREAK]

Well, yeah, but that 350W PSU is still possibly too low powered. But if you aren't planning on going SLI for a while i guess it can wait until you do.

You don't need RAID really, but it's a nice thing if you get it. Your choice there

What is SLi? I know it has to do with the vid but how is it better? Is there a big improvement for the money?

Oh, there's an option to upgrade the PSU and I upgraded it to 500W.

What do you think of the mobo also? Can I do better performance for cheaper?

I'm actually thinking maybe I should get mem than the second hard drive which I could get later. I have a feeling they'd cost about the same anyway.

Sorry for the 20 questions.

2 more configs...

one SATA HD + 1gb mem.

one SATA HD + 1gb mem. + 6600 vid card

 

[donbenni]

Please excuse if this info isn't entirely correct, i'm typing off the top of my head. And please excuse the waffle, because it's there

SLI is what your chosen motherboard supports (that's why i'm talking about it). It's basically a way in which you can have two nVidia graphics cards (they have to be the same type of card e.g. 2 x 6800GTs) working together if you want. This increases performance by as much as 80% in games. You can still run a single PCI-Express graphics card of either ATi or nVidia if you don't want to use the SLI feature, but if you do, then it might be wise to buy an nVidia card now and then get another one when you need the performance increase. Running two graphics cards simlutaneously puts immense strain on your PSU, so if you would like to use SLI you may need to upgrade your PSU (which you have).

Basically, decide now whether or not you think you will want to run two graphics cards in the future and then work with that. As mentioned, for SLI to work you will need an SLI capable motherboard (check) a powerful PSU (check) and 2 identical nVidia graphics cards (?).

You don't need SLI, it's just one of those things that hardcore gamers use. In my mind, SLI is great for a simple but powerful upgrade for your PC. IMO make sure you can go SLI later when you need to. For example, buy a 6800GT now and then when your computer is slowing down a little (i.e. the games are getting too good for it) whack in another 6800GT and everything will be fine again.

With regards to the motherboard: i don't really know a whole lot about them, but that one seems ok.

The 2nd harddisk is totally optional. Better/more memory would probably be better.

 

[emad]

try for an Athlon64 3700+. It shouldn't cost you more than $30-40 more and the performance boost is significant thanks to the 1mb of L2 cache.

- what video card does the first configuration use? You may be better off without an SLI motherboard and running a 6600GT. When it's time to upgrade your video card, adding a 2nd 6600 won't even give you the performance needed to keep up with a Radeon X1300 (their latest 'mid-range'). Save money now with a single 6600gt on a non-sli board. When its time to upgrade, buy a similarly priced video card and you'll be set to go. Within a year or two, entry level cards will blow the lid off a 6600GT in SLI config.

80gb is fairly low in terms of storage capacity IMO. You really shouldn't have less than 120gb. Most of the current games out there use a minimum of 2 gigs, some take over 4. Add in the fact that many of today's programs are getting VERY bloated and you'll run out of space quickly.

I know it'll cost you a bit more now, but it'll save you some headaches in the future. I'm a firm believer against buying the extreme in entry level computer products since they become outdated VERY quickly.

 

[VIPFREAK]

You don't need SLI, it's just one of those things that hardcore gamers use. In my mind, SLI is great for a simple but powerful upgrade for your PC. IMO make sure you can go SLI later when you need to. For example, buy a 6800GT now and then when your computer is slowing down a little (i.e. the games are getting too good for it) whack in another 6800GT and everything will be fine again

Ok... I think SLI is definitely out then. Mem. more important.

With regards to the motherboard: i don't really know a whole lot about them, but that one seems ok.

Since my dad is assisting me in the purchase I guess my budget is around $500. He was saying the mobo might not be good because it may not utilize the better ram. 400mhz is low and he says 800 would be more ideal since that's part of the lag when I'm working with graphics.

try for an Athlon64 3700+. It shouldn't cost you more than $30-40 more and the performance boost is significant thanks to the 1mb of L2 cache.

What board would you recommend then?

what video card does the first configuration use? You may be better off without an SLI motherboard and running a 6600GT. When it's time to upgrade your video card, adding a 2nd 6600 won't even give you the performance needed to keep up with a Radeon X1300 (their latest 'mid-range'). Save money now with a single 6600gt on a non-sli board. When its time to upgrade, buy a similarly priced video card and you'll be set to go. Within a year or two, entry level cards will blow the lid off a 6600GT in SLI config.

So get a different non-SLI mobo and an expensive graphics card not from them?

80gb is fairly low in terms of storage capacity IMO. You really shouldn't have less than 120gb. Most of the current games out there use a minimum of 2 gigs, some take over 4. Add in the fact that many of today's programs are getting VERY bloated and you'll run out of space quickly.

I have an external 160gb and probably be getting another 250gb for x-mas but I'm sure there's a difference in performance since it's not SATA right?

I'm a firm believer against buying the extreme in entry level computer products since they become outdated VERY quickly.

That's what I'm worried about. But this isn't that entry level is it?

 

[emad]

That's what I'm worried about. But this isn't that entry level is it?

The 6600 is the lowest end of the current entry level cards out there

for your motherboard, it really doesn't matter what you get so long as it's a major brand like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, etc. Try to avoid boards with onboard video cards.

As for your ram, get the cheapest BRANDED PC3200 memory you can get. Samsung and Kingston are your best bets there. It's reliable and more than sufficient as long as you don't overclock. Any motherboard will handle it

 

[RobcioPL]

I would at worst get the 6800GS SLI card. Seems to perform really well, even better with two of them

 

[VIPFREAK]

The 6600 is the lowest end of the current entry level cards out there

I noticed that from the many GTP Video card threads that it doesn't seem that great... I may just get it separate like I originally planned. I have a $100 towards BB that I could use for the Vid card. (so long PS3 money ) I'd rather get the $100 than a $100 locked up at BB too. I had a plan of buying something $100 and then returning it to get the money.

for your motherboard, it really doesn't matter what you get so long as it's a major brand like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, etc. Try to avoid boards with onboard video cards.

As for your ram, get the cheapest BRANDED PC3200 memory you can get. Samsung and Kingston are your best bets there. It's reliable and more than sufficient as long as you don't overclock. Any motherboard will handle it

So will 3700+ mobo support higher mem like PC4200? 800mhz? But it would be a lot more expensive I gather.

 

[emad]

I noticed that from the many GTP Video card threads that it doesn't seem that great... I may just get it separate like I originally planned. I have a $100 towards BB that I could use for the Vid card. (so long PS3 money ) I'd rather get the $100 than a $100 locked up at BB too. I had a plan of buying something $100 and then returning it to get the money.

The card was fantastic for it's time. However, with the new cards out there, it's a night and day performance difference.

will 3700+ mobo support higher mem like PC4200? 800mhz? But it would be a lot more expensive I gather.

why the eff would you want the pc4200 ram? Do you plan on running your system through a MASSIVE overclock? You'll be fine with PC3200 ram @200mhz (200mhz=FSB of most AMD cpus). I've built my computer as an upper-mid range computer and I just went with PC3200 Samsung memory...

 

[VIPFREAK]

The card was fantastic for it's time. However, with the new cards out there, it's a night and day performance difference.




why the eff would you want the pc4200 ram? Do you plan on running your system through a MASSIVE overclock? You'll be fine with PC3200 ram @200mhz (200mhz=FSB of most AMD cpus). I've built my computer as an upper-mid range computer and I just went with PC3200 Samsung memory...

I'd want the mobo to be 800mhz FSB too. Remember I'm doing PS and 3D rendering not just games.

 

[emad]

I'd want the mobo to be 800mhz FSB too. Remember I'm doing PS and 3D rendering not just games.

Then you'll want an Intel system running DDR2 memory (the fastest low cost ram for that is 533mhz). It's Intel that uses the 800mhz FSB - not AMD. For your price range, you probably won't be able to afford anything faster than a 3.0ghz P4....

 

[VIPFREAK]

Isn't a 3.0ghz pretty fast anyways I know they are expensive.

 

[VIPFREAK]

Ok so far this is what I got for the parts of my puter... What do you guys think?

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.20ghz Socket 939

A8V-E Deluxe Mobo

337766 ValueRam 1.0GB PC-2700 DDR SDRAM Memory Module Kingston Memory KVR333/1GR

Vid Card... ??

450-500w PSU

 

[donbenni]

That RAM is too slow, you want at least PC-3200. Rest is fine. Graphics card - maybe 6800GS?

 

[Event]

That RAM is too slow, you want at least PC-3200. Rest is fine. Graphics card - maybe 6800GS?

6800GS seems to be the sweet spot for Video Cards right now, just like the 9800Pro was 16 months ago when I built my computer. 👍 Good card, but I tried putting together a build last night, and with a $500-ish limit, a $200 video card wasn't in the budget... I would suggest an X1600Pro or X800XL 👍

 

[Raghavan]

Wait, how much do you want to spend on a mobo and cpu? I got my Athlon 3500 plus an Abit AN8 SLI mobo for $279 from Fry's. Isn't there a Fry's in SJ? If not just go to Fremont and look at their deals. I also got 1gig of memory from Kingston for $59 from Fry's too. Check out their deals.
That 80 gig hard drive doesn't look so good either. I got my 80 gig from newegg for $54, but you can get a 250 gig SATA from Seagate or Western Digital for $60 from Fry's too.
Check out Fry's for that stuff, the only thing that you should buy outside of Fry's is a graphics card. Newegg.com has great deals for graphics cards. I got a X850XT for $260.

 

[emad]

Ok so far this is what I got for the parts of my puter... What do you guys think?[/i]

1) use the Athlon64 3700+. It has twice the cache of the 3500 and costs only $30ish more
2) cheap ram is good, but that's WAY too slow. PC3200 or better.
3) I'm not too up to date on the video cards... but I'll assume anything from the high end range of the previous generation of video cards would be a pretty good choice for price

 

[RobcioPL]

450qw Power supply should be fine. ATi X850xt from newegg would be a pretty nice card.

 

[VIPFREAK]

Ok... sorry people... I've drasically made changes to what I'm getting. As it stands now I'm staying with Intel partially because the store clerk said if PC gaming isn't the primary need Intel is the way to go. I know it's still debated but I think it's good for me and 3D rendering.

With that said I'm looking at a ready made system from HP model A1240N and it has an Asus PTGD-LA (Goldfish3-GL8E) and just buying my own vid card. It seems cheaper than puting one together. With that said my budget is about $700.

 

[Event]

Ok... sorry people... I've drasically made changes to what I'm getting. As it stands now I'm staying with Intel partially because the store clerk said if PC gaming isn't the primary need Intel is the way to go. I know it's still debated but I think it's good for me and 3D rendering.

With that said I'm looking at a ready made system from HP model A1240N and it has an Asus PTGD-LA (Goldfish3-GL8E) and just buying my own vid card. It seems cheaper than puting one together. With that said my budget is about $700.

You only seem to want it to play FEAR... that's gaming! It's not like there's much difference at ALL in standard web browsing, etc, it only becomes SLIGHTLY apparent when it comes to encoding/decoding. Don't follow what the SALESMAN says, he just wants to make money. Intel's cost MORE than AMDs. Go with AMD, dude. There's nothing wrong with that!!

 

[Vasco]

Well this is what I was thinking for my gaming comp (hopefully purchasing next year...with updated parts as they come out )

Prices are in AUD, all I need is some advice on RAM really (like many others). Oh and I need advice for a nice case.

VIDEO CARD
GeCube Radeon X1800 XT 256MB
$719 < http://www.tigerdirect.com.au/product_info.php?cPath=37_42&products_id=180 >

MOTHERBOARD
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
$190 < http://shop.pc.net.au/A.i.TECH_2909_/MSI_K8N_Neo4_Platinum_ATX_AMD_S-939_Motherboard.html >

CPU
AMD Athlon64 4000+ 2.4GHz 1MB Cache - Socket 939
$499 < http://www.ticomputers.com.au/ >

MOUSE + KEYBOARD
Logitech G7 Cordless Mouse
$120 < http://www.nintek.com.au/x/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=2732 >
Logitech G15 Keyboard
$94 < http://www.minidigital.com.au/largerDesc.aspx?productid=229517&catid=451&brandid=26 >

RAM
OCZ Gold PC3200 C2 EL DC CL2 DDR 1GB Kit
$198 < http://www.nintek.com.au/x/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=2059 >

HARD DRIVE
Western Digital 200GB Caviar SE SATA II/8MB/7200RPM (WD2000JS)
$136 < http://www.i-store.com.au/product/?CategoryID=0&productid=6210 >

SPEAKERS
Logitech Z-2300 THX
$176 < http://umart.net/au/product_info.php?cPath=96_192&products_id=100742 >

DVD BURNERS
Pioneer DVR-110DBK Black
$66 < http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=2 >

LG GSA-4167BBK Dual Layer 16x All Format Burner
$67 < http://www.qcgo.com.au/productdetails.php?productcode=DVLGDVD16XBK416 >

CASE
Thermaltake Tsunami Black VA3000BNA (NO PSU)
$140 < Assumed, as a Thermaltake 430W PSU is $60 >

SOUND CARD
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
$138 < http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=2 >

HDTV CARD
Dvico Fusion HDTV DVB-T Plus PCI + Remote
$169 < http://www.nintek.com.au/x/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=2587 >

POWER SUPPLY
Antec TruePower ATX 550W Power Supply
$143 < http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=5 >

TOTAL
$2855