Pc Specs

[CaptainJebus]

Ok, I am looking into building a new Pc, It will be my first Pc built but I want to play Psu [Among a few other games like Half-Life 2] I can get a lot of essential parts possibly for free or very cheep, so if anyone would mind pointing me in the direction of some good set ups that would run Psu at max I would really appriciate it

[NightHour13]

Get a motherboard that can support dual core processors such as the godly AMD Athlon FX Dual core (i think i might left out a big number some where), DDR2 Ram, LOTS OF MEMORY!!!!, Lots of hard drive space...cool lil case and a dvd disc thingy.

Make sure you get some liquid cooled goodieness and once it's all done...Scream like an inraged chimpanzee at your closest relative. if their all dead, scream ALONE FOR THATS WHAT YOU ARE!!!!...ALONE....IT'S LATE.....

[CaptainJebus]

Haha, starngly enough I was just looking at liquid cooling. And holy crap that processor is quite expensive. Thanks though, imma look into that processor more now.

[VioletSkye]

Liquid cooling shouldn't be necessary unless you plan to do some serious overclocking. If you are wanting to oc like mad then go with phase change cooling as it is far superior to liquid cooling.

BTW any preferences like AMD vs. Intel or Nvidia vs. ATI?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2006-07-23 21:39 ]</font>

[CaptainJebus]

Well I can get Intel for free I believe, AMD I will be paying for, and Nvidia or Ati is fine, more or less whatever I can get that serves me more for a cheeper price.

[Luis]

If you go with AMD ill suggest to get a motherboard socket AM2 because they also support DDR2 RAM

[VioletSkye]

I'd suggest a Core 2 Duo. The E6400 is supposedly a descent overclocker and has a multiplier of 8 (I think, don't quote me though.) It doesn't have the 4MB cache of the E6600 but it still should be an excellent CPU. I've seen them priced for around $360 which isn't bad. You'll need to pre-order one as they are not yet released, however it looks as though Thursday is the release date. Make sure you get a good motherboard to support it. It uses a Socket T (LGA 775) mobo. I've seen a few recommendations for the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128012) although if you are looking for an SLI or Crossfire setup then that won't work (unless you go with an Nvidia 7950) and you may want to wait for something cheaper than the $269 AOpen board which seemed to be the only board with 2 PCI Express X16 slots and the only one officially supporting Crossfire. I only checked newegg though so there may be other boards supporting SLI and Crossfire also. I'll look when I get more time.

As an afterthought, if you really do get Intel free or at a reduced cost then you may want to go for something like an E6600, E6700 or E6800 http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2006-07-24 12:05 ]</font>

[Blitzkommando]

$360 is way over the Intel spec for the E6400. That's the believed price for the E6600 factoring in the premiums (Intel says $316 for E6600). Also, I remember seeing some tests with the X6800 clocked down to E6300 speed to see how much the doubled cache makes, and it made as much as a 20% increase even using the same speed and multiplier. That makes the extra cache worth the extra cost from my perspective. The E6600 compares fairly well to the FX-62 which is about three times as expensive.

As for graphics, I would suggest the ATI X1900 XT. It's similarly priced to the 7900 GT but has much fewer complaints about faulty and defective products. It also allows HDR and Anti-Alias at the same time which, for a picture quality fanatic like myself, is very, very good. It also has Angle Independent Anisotropic Filtering (Texture filtering) whereas the nVidia cards require filtered textures to be at 90 degree angles. It is more tasking to enable HQAF but the ATI cards are very good about handling the extra data and it makes a rather minimal hit to performance.

Also, make sure you purchase DDR2 800 not 667 as there is a noticable increase in performance with the faster RAM. Also make sure the motherboard you choose supports the Conroe core (Core 2 Duo) voltages and has the BIOS ready to accept the new processors. The voltages are key because the Conroe series has a lower voltage requirement from the Pentium D line and has a different voltage stepping.

The 'official' release date for the Conroe core is 'technically' today. Good luck finding them today, especially in stock. They will be rare because the hype has built them up to being such monsters so the demand is through the roof.

[CaptainJebus]

Ah I am getting ahold of parts now, so I can wait a few months. Hopefully by the time Psu hits I should have everything. I like the prices of the intel much more. Luckily I have time to get everything and hopefully find some parts I will need at a discount. Well thanks for the help so far everyone!

[VioletSkye]

I did manage to find some E6400 pre-orders for around $288 (considerably lower than my previous finds of $360.) The E6600 (regardless of what the MSRP says it should go for) is pre-ordering at around $400. Obviously the prices will come down after launch, but for now those are the cheapest prices I have found and they were at Overclockers. From what I have read the difference between the 4MB and 2MB cache is only an average boost of 3.5% (ranging from 0-10% at best.) Still once the prices come down to where they should be it might be worth the extra $92 for most people to go for the E6600 (as that seems to be the sweetspot for the Core 2 Duo line) but for a budget system the E6400 will more than suffice.

For a look at the 2MB vs 4MB cache differences check out: AnandTech (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=4). It does mention that over time you should see more benefits from the larger cache "as applications grow larger in their working data sets" which is a given so that is something to keep in mind as well, but like I stated earlier the E6400 is still an excellent CPU and should be able to match the clock rate of the E6600 with stock cooling.

All of the Core 2 Duo ready boards I've looked at list DDR2 800 as the standard so I doubt anyone will be trying to use 667, but hey it never hurts to mention it http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

As for the card, I agree, you can't really go wrong with the X1900XT.

Also to clear things up, I know what the suggested prices are for the cpus, what I was listing are the pre-order costs as of right now. So when I said the E6400 was $360 what I was relaying is the cost of the pre-order for the particular site I was looking at.

Suggested costs for the CPU's once the hype levels off are:

Intel Core 2 Ex. X6800 2.93GHz 4MB $999
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz 4MB $530
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz 4MB $316
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz 2MB $224
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz 2MB $183


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VioletSkye on 2006-07-24 14:52 ]</font>