Curse

easyg · Feb 15, 2007, 03:46 AM // 03:46

Well, for 1200 Euros, that would be what? 1575 USD or so? You can build a really nice system for that price.

I still think it would be in your best interest, tho, to wait till March for the Geforce 8600 Ultra. It's going to retail for about $180 USD supposedly, and will be DX10 compliant. Gosh, to spend that much or more for a 7900 series card today would just be crazy.

As for CPU and chipset, I'd grab an E6400 and P965 based motherboard, for the overclocking headway. My personal preference is the AB9 Pro from Abit. My last couple of boards have been Abit (AW9D, IN9 32X-Max, IB9, etc), and they have all been rock solid and extremely well made.

Abit BIOS setup is really nice too. Award BIOS is flexible and powerful, but not overwhelmingly complicated like the LanParty UT stuff. Also Abit has a neat little software package called uGuru, which runs in Windows XP but allows dynamic acccess to BIOS from the desktop. Unfortunately, there's no Vista patch yet.

Empedocles · Feb 15, 2007, 02:58 PM // 14:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by easyg

Well, for 1200 Euros, that would be what? 1575 USD or so? You can build a really nice system for that price.

Unfortunately, the exchange rate disparity doesn't transfer to computer hardware, in the North Europe a dollar is almost euro's worth, if I'm allowed to exaggerate a little.

Quote:

As for CPU and chipset, I'd grab an E6400 and P965 based motherboard, for the overclocking headway. My personal preference is the AB9 Pro from Abit. My last couple of boards have been Abit (AW9D, IN9 32X-Max, IB9, etc), and they have all been rock solid and extremely well made.

Abit BIOS setup is really nice too. Award BIOS is flexible and powerful, but not overwhelmingly complicated like the LanParty UT stuff. Also Abit has a neat little software package called uGuru, which runs in Windows XP but allows dynamic acccess to BIOS from the desktop. Unfortunately, there's no Vista patch yet.

I would reckon 4300 holds even greater oc potential (check out this: http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2903) due to 10x multiplier - you don't have to strain the bus as much, and more importantly, it's 50 eur/$ cheaper than 6400. But I guess it won't matter that much to OP.

uGuru looks indeed neat, and that's why I went with Abit as well.

EternalTempest · Feb 15, 2007, 03:02 PM // 15:02

Amd (today) just slashed there prices on the entire Athlon X2 64 bit line and added the new Athlon X2 64 6000+ cpu.

The "best" cpu out there is the Intel Duo Core 2 chips but there pricey (the good ones). With the recent price slash, Amd may of be the best cost/performance ratio.

I would check out web sites as www.anandtech.com and look at the cpu reviews and see how the different chips hold up then check out www.pricewatch.com / www.newegg.com and see how much they cost.

Once you determine what cpu you are going with, then you can start looking at motherboards. I would have 1gb ram at least, and swing 2gb if you can.

Example (Pricewatch)
Amd Athlon X2 5200 is currently going for about $290 (one step less then the newest $500 6000 chip)
Intel Duo Core 2 at the price range $315 will get you (e6600 chip) which is two steps behind the current Intel e6800 extreme at $700ish)
Now do a comparison of the 5200 vs the e6600 and make your selection based on budget / what you want.

These prices are a snapshot in time. Give it 2 weeks and the figures can be completely different.

Since the newest 8880 dx 10 card is pricey, I would save money and go with a lower end 7600 card and save up for a nice dx 10 generation card latter to save you some money as well.

easyg · Feb 15, 2007, 10:14 PM // 22:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

Example (Pricewatch)
Amd Athlon X2 5200 is currently going for about $290 (one step less then the newest $500 6000 chip)
Intel Duo Core 2 at the price range $315 will get you (e6600 chip) which is two steps behind the current Intel e6800 extreme at $700ish)
Now do a comparison of the 5200 vs the e6600 and make your selection based on budget / what you want.

Yes, AMD offers much better price-perforamance if you aren't overclocking, but as many other observers have stated this all changes if you are able and willing to heavily tweak your stuff.

This is particularly true where the E6300 and E6400 are concerned. It's true, for instance, that the E6400 is 3 steps off of the top-end X6800. However, it overclocks extremely well (this is putting it midly) and may be capable of outperforming an X2 5200.

I guess my point is just that the price-performance index changes a lot when overclocking is thrown into the mix. Do you want/plan/need to overclock your system? That's the first question that needs to be asked before anyone can say what CPU is right for you.