Building Gaming PC.. Tell me what you think.

[ka50]

dude where did you get those prices... way high

goto pricewatch.com

radeon doesn't cost that much

[speedracer95v6]

go with at least the 9800pro (my 9600 pro is super, but why downgrade?).

go with at least 1GB of RAM. I was running 768MB in my slot A athlon 1ghz my junior year, you can do better than 512MB now.

go with at least a 160GB harddrive. You may not use it now, but later you might. Hint: If you have a staples near you, go there for their early bird special on friday. There may be some harddrives for cheap. ;)

And do as the ka50 said, go to pricewatch...only way to do it(unless you get a steal of deal on parts elsewhere).

[BirdOfPrey01]

Go with a Geforce 4 6800 Ultra or the ATI 9800, they worth the money.

And as for a half life 2. It does not require high end video card to play high end graphics.

I have a cheap low end geforce 5200 FX, and I can play half life 2 on trilinear/ 16x anostophic, with full reflections and lighting.

It's funny because half life 2 doesnt lag at all on my PC, yet Doom 3 is unplayable for me still.

Do not overclock.

Just make sure your bus kicks *** [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Turbo V6 Camaro]

no gaming PC should have less then 1 GB ram.

i would get the dual channel DDR

for gameing a Riad 0 is always the fastest.

for video i would get the cheaper of the ATI X800 cards my cuz jsut got one and they look AMAZING

[L32Projekt]

The dual-channel memory wouldn't help him out, as the Athlon 64 in 754-pin configuration doesn't support dual-channel mode. The bandwidth of dual-channel on that system configuration would be a waste anyways.

[ka50]

Originally posted by BirdOfPrey01:
Go with a Geforce 4 6800 Ultra or the ATI 9800, they worth the money.

And as for a half life 2. It does not require high end video card to play high end graphics.

I have a cheap low end geforce 5200 FX, and I can play half life 2 on trilinear/ 16x anostophic, with full reflections and lighting.

It's funny because half life 2 doesnt lag at all on my PC, yet Doom 3 is unplayable for me still.

Do not overclock.

Just make sure your bus kicks *** [img]smile.gif[/img]

Well, top of the line stuff surely performs nicely, however I do believe FX5900 is enough for today's games (backed by a good CPU). It's just a tad bit below radeon 9800 pro. And costs less.

Why would you not overclock your GPU and CPU? Provided you monitor your core temeratures and expriment to figure out best overclock, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be done.

[97V6Camaro]

I would say of all the stuff listed....get at least a gig of RAM and u are set...

[Th3 RiCk]

At the present time there is no real reason to overclock a 2.4Ghz cpu. Giving AMD's track record, I'm going to avoid this until technology has outrun the cpu.

On the otherhand, after I assemble it and decide it's too slow I'll probably head down that road.

I'll probably just go ahead and start with 1gb of memory and add a 1gb stick every 6 months until I reach 3gb.

[HAZ-Matt]

Why should no gaming PC have less than 1 GB of RAM?
It would be different if he were running a graphics work station but not a gaming machine. Someone go get some benchmarks with 512MB of ram and then 1GB of RAM and then explain to me why you need 1GB, especially when you could using that money elsewhere.

Here is what I would do... even though I do not know your budget:

1. PCI Express MB
2. Some type of current gen PCI Express video card...
3. I never had much luck with Seagate drives... I've been buying nothing but Western Digitals for the past several years.

[L32Projekt]

I'd say the PCIe motherboard is a good idea. As for the 1GB of memory, I'd say that amount is ideal, c'mon... it's not THAT expensive unless you're going with DDR2 RAM. Going with more is overkill. Concerning Seagate/Western Digital, I've seen enough WD's fail to last me a lifetime. Of course, I kinda had doubts about where the shop I was working at got their drives, poor customers.

At least most manufacturers offer a 5 year manufacturer's warranty now.

[Th3 RiCk]

$1200 or so is my budget. It's going to be built over a span of 2-3 months.

[rudy q]

try Ibuypower.com

[L32Projekt]

You may want to wait until AMD gets a PCIe MB out there before jumping in. Other improvements include faster SATA and better on-chip firewall (at least on the nForce4 chipsets). I love not even having my system built yet and being completely obsolete... :D

EDIT: Forgot to say that Socket-939 will be a must for future upgrades as well.

[ November 30, 2004, 05:39 AM: Message edited by: L32Projekt ]