Ok I have about a budget of $1000 to buy the following from umart, and extra on top for a monitor. All I wanna do is play Enemy Territory : Quake Wars at decent speed. I know it would be better to wait till next year till the game actually comes out, but the current PC has blown up so I have no choice.

CPU
RAM
M/Board
V/Card
Case

This is what I've come up with:

Case+Power
Antec Top Quality Sonata II Quiet Black Case Instock $175.00

CPU
AMD Athlon™ 64 AM2 3800+ Processor Retail (AM2) Outofstock $165.00

M/Board
Gigabyte GA-M55S-S3 AM2, NF550, ATX, PCIEx16, DUALDDRII, SATAII, RAID Instock $156.00
or
Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 AM2, nFORCE 4 SLI, PCIE, Dual DDRII, SATAII,GLAN Instock $155.00

Video
Asus EN7600GT-2DHT-256 GF7600GT-256MB HDTV-OUT 2XDVI-I PreorderETA $239.00

RAM
DDR2 2048MB PC4200 533Mhz Dual Channel (2x1G) Turbo RAM PQI(Life time warranty) Instock $289.00


Can someone please tell me which is the better motherboard because they're both the same price and I don't really know the difference.

Also, it's about another $50 to upgrade to the dual core AMD 3800. Is it really worth it? I'm already over budget u see...

Lastly, I need a 17" LCD monitor for the folks. There's about 10 different ones on umart now, all around the same price. Any recommendations? They won't be using it for games. Our speakers blew up so I'd probably be keen to get a monitor with speakers for them...but not if that detracts greatly from the display quality...

thanks guys, pls no abuse :(

"Outofstock" - Pick a different CPU unless u don't mind waiting for a few weeks.
Also consider a 19" monitor for the $70 price difference. Possibly consider Geil RAM instead of PQI.

Other than that seems pretty good.

last edited by Dodgymon at 16:18:07 13/Oct/06

Thanks for the reply.

I'll consider the 19" thanks. Maybe I can convince my olds to take my CRT and i'll get a 19" LCD for myself. But CRT are still better for games right? Especially if i need to run a hardcore game like ET:QW at lower res?

I don't mind waiting for the CPU because if i was to get a diff cpu it would be the dual core 3800 AM2 which is another 50 bucks, and only gives like a 10% increase in gaming performance according to the AMD website.

dont be daft go conroe.

Get a dualcore cpu, AMD Athlon™ 64 3600+AM2 Processor Retail Dual Core AM2 65W Instock $185.00

seriously dude - it's so hard for computer shops to sell Amd now, some of the bigger local shops are giving away free AMD polo shirts in the hope people will take AMD stock off their hands.


either way - you are definately getting what you pay for

last edited by koopz at 18:24:34 13/Oct/06

dont be daft go conroe.

Despite being a former AMD fanboy I must agree with this. It is a very bad choice to go AMD when Intel's offerings run faster and are cheaper. It's almost like throwing money down the toilet.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - $255
Asus P5B - $209
DDR2 2GB 533Mhz PQI - $289
Antec Sonata II - $175
Albatron 7600GT - $219

Sure it comes to $1147, a little over $1000, but it is significantly faster than an AMD 3500+, 3800+ and beats an X2 4200+ in most applications as well. It even gives the X2 4600+ some good competition.

Benchmarks of Intel E6300 vs AMD 3800+,4200+,4600+ in Oblivion:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=16

I stopped someone who was about to buy an AMD system the other day, got him to buy an E6300 and he couldn't be happier when he brought it home and tried it out. I'm still stuck on AMD and waiting for the cash to upgrade to a better box.

has the whole world gone mad?
amd fan boys buying intel!?!?!?

Oh thanks guys!

I didn't realise Intel were ahead of AMD again?

For the past few years AMD has been killing intel (i thought) - i guess times have changed! cheers i'll re-evaluate

My dual core intel f***ing pwns.

I didn't realise Intel were ahead of AMD again?

For the past few years AMD has been killing intel (i thought) - i guess times have changed! cheers i'll re-evaluate

If you want to see performance graphs of most modern AMD and Intel CPUs visit:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

Intel is a better idea for all out performance atm, but if you hard your little heart set on an AMD I'd definately recommend the nForce 590 board over the nForce 4 one, hands down.

I'd also recommend spending the extra $60 or so and moving up to a 7900 of some sort.

PALIT 7900GS 256meg Dual Link DVI TV-Out Model: 7900GS PCI-E 256MB TV-OUT 2DVI
Item Code viPAx_7900gs_256 - $299 (Gamedude)

And if you could sqeeze out an extra $30 on top of that, check out a x1900

GECUBE ATi RADEON X1900GT 256meg PCI Express MODEL : X1900GTD-VID3 - $330 (gamedude)

By all means shop around a bit more, you could prolly similar cards or better at a better price, but I just wanted to show that for a tiny bit more you can get a card with that little extra grunt that'll last you that extra 6-12 months and pump out those extra frames.

has the whole world gone mad?
amd fan boys buying intel!?!?!?

this reminds me of the time the new Unreal came out and people stopped playing Q3a in favour of s***ty netcode.


seriously though - to be fair... Amd's work with Ati and 'the Folding project' blows most of what we've been led to believe about WIN32 computing in the past outta teh arsehole


last edited by koopz at 20:01:44 14/Oct/06

Ok well it looks like i'm gonna go the intel - a very similar system to what trog just got. Gonna blow my budget out da window tho :(

20inch lcd's look sweeeet tho.

To be fair, my Mac (T2500) creams my X3800, both of which run at 2.0GHz. I can only imagine how much better even an E6300 would go.