need help building a gaming pc

[swanster]

[fire1811]

[digitard]

At this point that should be fine.

Once HL2 and DOOM 3 come out SO many games will be built off their "new" engines you wont have to upgrade for a while and still get high FPS.

Just like now. I can still play any game off my 2yr almost old GF4 card cause all the companies are building their "new generation" engines. Once those come out you'll have a year or 2 before anything comes up with another "next generation" game engine.

[OfficerGoat]

Personaly it looks like you are droping alot of cash into that box. If you are going to spend that sorta money I would personaly spring for a couple of ultra 360 drives and of course a controler .. or get a board with an onboard controler. (Personaly I prefer a basic board and add my own components.)

[Fixion]

I don't think its a great idea to drop so much cas on a top of the line computer. But one of my good friends did just that. Needless to say, is computer puts mine (and 99.9999% of other peoples computers to shame). He droped ~$3000 USD on his.

He overclocked his P4 3.2 to 4.2GHz, he has a promescia cooler (sp?).

I wouldn't get the Maxtors. Get serial ATA Western Digitals, or better yet, Seatgates. Besides that (and that I'd go with AMD because of the price), your setup seems fine.

Seagate makes the best drives IMO (but only the Barracuda line). Very quiet and fast.

I also think its better to buy all the parts to the water cooling instead of a kit. But since I'm not familiar with that kit, I'll shut up. BTW, Eheim makes the best pumps , and be sure to get 1/2 inch (inside diamiter) ,or larger if you prefer, hoses.

[ICOM]

if you want gaming you need a Althon Processor. It runs faster then intel. Dont get fooled with the ghz. A 1.8 althon isnt the same as a 1.8 intel. 1.8 althon is roughly a 2.4 intel, but runs lot smoother.

[painball]

If you don't wanna spend that much on your PC, I would recommend going with an AMD processor. As aforementioned, they are very cheap compared to Intel processors. They are also very easy to overclock. For instance the AMD 2500+ Barton runs at 1.8GHz, but it can be OCed to run as fast as a 3200 Barton, which I don't know what it runs at.

Sadly AMD started locking the 2500+'s, making them a bit harder to OC. Luckily my 2500+ is unlocked.

[The Deacon]

Step it up to an AMD 64 bit. Prolly still cost you less than a pentium.

If I had a thousand bucks lying around, I'd get a dual processor motherboard and slap some 64s in there...

[Restola]

Before you spend a lot of money...take a look at what is just around the corner.

New 64 bit socket 93X (cant remember exactly...938 maybe?), and PCIexpress (which I think is being overhyped after reading this report: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040310/index.html).

Even if both of those new things blow...prices will drop anyways on the slightly-older stuff.

And Icom is right about the ghz. My AMD 64 3200+ only runs at 2ghz.

[Dryden]

I would most definately recommend NOT getting an AMD. I've got several dead AMD processors at work (against zero Intels out of hundreds). AMD processors have a history of high power consumption and problems with heat dissipation, and they're widely reported to have a MTBF less than 6 months (just do a Google search).

I built several new machines a few months ago, and I would encourage you to consider an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe Mobo and 1Gb (512x2) of GeiL DDR400 RAM - this is a rock solid combo under Linux, BSDi Unix, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, and available at a good price from NewEgg.com.

Forget the silly suggestions of waiting on a 64-bit processor or buying a dual processor board - unless you have both an operating system AND applications written specifically for it (you weren't planning on running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and SQL, were you?) it buys you absolutely nothing.

[fire1811]

i agree with dryden i have had two systems with AMD and both had problems with the heat and both needed replaced. and the rest of the pc was plenty cool

and if you talking AMD vs Intel top end wise

AMD is not faster

in 31 benchmarks intels 3.4ghzEE beat the AMD's 2.2ghz 64fx-51 in 23 of them.

those processors are priced close to each other.

[devildog]

Originally posted by Fixion

He overclocked his P4 3.2 to 4.2GHz, he has a promescia cooler (sp?).

i call shananigans. i raise the bullcrap flag 100ft in the air

Originally posted by fire1811

in 31 benchmarks intels 3.4ghzEE beat the AMD's 2.2ghz 64fx-51 in 23 of them.

those processors are priced close to each other.

what benchmarks did you get this at? intels chips do get better benches on things like 3dmark and crap utilities like that, but amd has higher frame rates on pretty much every game benchmark used, fs2k4, ut2k3, etc...

stability wise, pentium probably has the win there, but id say the fx-51 stomps anything pentium can throw at it.

[fire1811]

it was in the march issue of maximumpc
they give some of the most honest review i have read
if you would like i can scan it for ya

[devildog]

check the issue again and see if they ran any game benchmarks, garenteed (sp?) the amd chipped machine got better frame rates than the pentium one.

[fire1811]

small but give it you can still read it





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