2000$ and beyond confused.... Conroe / fx2?

[dManufacture]

Hows it going all?

 

Well, i am at a dillema here, a buddy of mine got me started on pc games. and i've started to realize my 2yr old p4 sony viao aint cutting it. I've had my hands in computers years ago. built a few, never oc'd or got into heavy gfx. But i want to now. I think i am coming in at a horrible time. My confusions are ati/nvidia/Xfire/SLi, amd/Intel, and a mobo to control it all. Last i remember amd was king as well as nvidia.... now it seems the otherway around.

 

I have about 2g's to spend would prefer to keep it all under 1800 w/ mouse and keyboard.

i would like to oc, or atleast get my hands wet in it. i am leaning towards the 7950(single, for the time being) as well as the e6400, i need something i could upgrade or atleast use for the next 3-4yrs. I also hear of quad core coming as well, which makes me think i should just avoid all this now. I am leaning towards dfi boards, just because i've seen this community and

am very impressed with it. Asus last i remember was great, but i think they've gotten over priced. Whatever would work best for me tho. I am sure i will get a lot of conflicting opinions. but please be open minded.

 

Thank you all, looking forward to responses,

Sean

[Angry_Games]

939 dual core or AM2 dual core AMD64/Opteron processor (the intel is great on paper, not really all that much greater in reality, costs a lot more, and is a new platform that is sure to have lots of nice little bugs and annoyances)

 

939 or AM2 motherboard...Lanparty for overclocking till your eyeglasses melt off your face, Infinity for that fun bit of mediocre overclocking just so you can get a $700 cpu's performance out of a $150-$250 cpu.

 

2GB of RAM. DDR or DDR2, depending on your platform. My choices are always OCZ first since I have a zillion kits of their memory and they all overclock quite nicely, and are all quite reliable, and OCZ has some of the best service and support in the industry. GEIL second because they make great stuff, and have awesome support. Buffalo for the same reasons. Can't go wrong really. Just pick something based on your needs....if you want to overclock a little to a lot, get PC4000 for the 939, PC2-8000 for the AM2 (DDR and DDR2 respectively).

 

If you plan on no overclocking, get something less expensive but still 2GB since you are a gamer.

 

ATI X1900XT or 7950 video. X1900XT is fantastic single-card choice for $300-$400. I have two and I don't even use the second one at the moment because my 1440x900 display can't bring my single X1900XT to it's knees with a decently overclocked dual-core 939 (X2 4400+, 2200Mhz per core stock, overclocked to 2600Mhz per core...which is equal to the FX-60 that costs 3x or 4x as much)

 

7950 if you want a card that will rock and not make you worry about future games for a good long time, and you have the money to burn (you obviously do, so we are gonna help you make smart choices that are also badass choices lol). I'd say 7950 for you since you got the cash for it.

 

Audigy2 ZS or X-Fi sound card. I still prefer the AUdigy2 ZS since I keep buying them used on For Sale sections of various forums, including this one, for $35 or less. X-Fi I am sure is better, but I am not prepared to pay $100+ for a card that I personally cannot tell the difference between it and the $35 one. Onboard sound is ok too, but as a gamer, you want an Audigy2 ZS or X-Fi. Audigy2 ZS is the bang-for-your-buck. X-Fi is for the Audio Snob or someone who has money to burn (take that extra savings and apply it to something like a slightly better psu, cpu, etc)

 

Hitachi 80GB SATA II 7200RPM 8MB cache hard drives for Windows OS...get 2 of them and put them in RAID-0 and watch your level load times in games drop to crazy low times. Grab a nice cheap Seagate 7200.10 16MB cache 7200RPM SATA II 250GB drive for backup (and only about $10-$20 more than the Hitachi's). RAID-0 has never failed me, but I never fail it by not having a big backup drive just in case. I'm foolish but not insane!

 

OCZ GamerXStream 700w psu. Best bang for the buck. PCP&C 850w psu if you really got money to burn (these things are like $300+ while the 700w OCZ is about $150 and is the highest recommended psu in the forum). I chose the OCZ psu's because I have about 7 of them now and never a single problem from any of them, and the ones I've had to buy have been well worth the money.

 

case = up to you honestly. I prefer Coolermaster Stackers. They are built like tanks (you could literally kill someone just by going into a fit of rage and raising it over your head and smashing it down on someone else's without much trouble at all...if you can lift it that is lol). They are also built for excellent watercooling.

 

cooling = I prefer Danger Den watercooling kits when I watercool, which is 100% of the time in my personal machines now.

 

for air cooling, I prefer Thermalright coolers over everything. I've tried many good products from TT, Zalman, Swiftech, etc, and I still like the Thermalright coolers the best for air. I must have bought 16 or more XP-90's over the last 12 months for my lab and for customers.

 

If you want to try watercooling (and you should....seriously...it isn't that hard and the benefits are quiet, cool, and overclocking!), then contact CPU Killer at the forum here. He's the Danger Den guy and he will treat you right.

 

If you want aircooling, hit the links in my sig that lead to SVC.com and check out their Thermalright collection, and try out teh SI-120, SI-128, XP-120, or XP-90, and get a decently quiet but efficient fan for it.

 

 

dvd burner = I use NEC 3550's exclusively, except for a single BenQ burner I bought that has the Lightscribe feature.

 

chipset cooler = for 939 boards, the Evercool VC-RE (in my sig)

 

for AM2 boards, the Thermalright HR-05 heatpipe coolers

 

 

 

 

now....quad core = forget it for now. Dual-core is already so new that there's still a few growing pains, but right now and for the next 2+ years, everything coming out will be optimized for dual-core cpu's.

 

programmers have a hard enough time optimizing games for 2 cores...they won't even worry about 4+ cores for a long time. AMD dual core cpu's are the best bang-for-the-buck so might as well get one and enjoy your gaming NOW instead of waiting...and waiting...and waiting... (because that is all you end up doing...the new 4-core cpu is out but yet AMD/Intel announces some new 8-core...Nvidia has a dual-gpu 7950 now, but already talking about a quad-gpu card soon...it's an endless cycle)

 

 

Asus makes good stuff. Don't ever think they are trashy. They, like all companies, make a bad product or less-than-stellar product now and then. All companies do.

 

Asus just isn't overclockable like a DFI.

 

Asus and everyone else CAN overclock pretty well, but they weren't designed from the ground up to overclock until your neighbor's dog catches fire like the DFI boards are.

 

None of them have the overclocking community that DFI has.

 

If you want no-frills and no-hassles, get an Asus or Abit.

 

If you want a board that you will grow into, that will get more complex as you learn more about it, freeing up new options and ways to squeeze performance out of it as you get more experience...if you want a board that is supported by the best damn community on the internet (a bunch of dorks helping another bunch of dorks to get those 2 extra fps in WoW), and don't mind sometimes a minor setback or a lot of headache until you flesh the entire system out...then the DFI is for you (just ask which one exactly based upon your cpu choice and we'll help ya choose)

[disturbed6dws]

dfi + socket939 all the way !

[rocketmanj210]

One thing to note with the 7950, they aren't good at doing multiple monitor configurations.

 

That wont bother me at all though.

[dManufacture]

wow, thank you for all your help. I am going to go w/ the amd. Am2 just has so much life to it yet. however, i was wondering when the LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R will be released? if it already has been where can i get it? I'll go ahead and post everything i get once it gets here. Thank you again for all your help!

[dManufacture]

looks like the lanparty 590 is coming out tom'r, if so

so this is how its going to look

 

am2 3800+

dfi lanparty 590SLi

evga 7950GX2

2gigs(1x2) of gskill pc6400 ddr2(was heavily debating on the corsair xms 6400c4, but these look more oc friendly)

ocz 700 gamestream(its at 129.99 right now!!!!!, cheaper then the 600, how could i say no?)

x2hitachi 80gigs

WD 250 wd2500ks sata 3.0g/s

Sunbeamtech Transformer ATX Full case(trying to save, plus lots of good reviews)

[Evil Ruin]

Hitachi 80GB SATA II 7200RPM 8MB cache hard drives for Windows OS...get 2 of them and put them in RAID-0 and watch your level load times in games drop to crazy low times. Grab a nice cheap Seagate 7200.10 16MB cache 7200RPM SATA II 250GB drive for backup (and only about $10-$20 more than the Hitachi's). RAID-0 has never failed me, but I never fail it by not having a big backup drive just in case. I'm foolish but not insane!

 

Hey HG how do you raid 2 or more HD's? Do i need more hardware to do so or how do you set it up?

[BrIONwoshMunky]

Hey HG how do you raid 2 or more HD's? Do i need more hardware to do so or how do you set it up?

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8790

[Guest Timmay]

Asus and everyone else CAN overclock pretty well, but they weren't designed from the ground up to overclock until your neighbor's dog catches fire like the DFI boards are.

 

LOL, love it!

[Angry_Games]

Hey HG how do you raid 2 or more HD's? Do i need more hardware to do so or how do you set it up?

http://www.angrygames.com/nf4raid-1.htm

http://www.angrygames.com/DAGF-1.htm

[Evil Ruin]

http://www.angrygames.com/nf4raid-1.htm

http://www.angrygames.com/DAGF-1.htm

 

Thank you. So if i buy say 2 80gig hds and 1 300gig hd, i can set it up to have the 2 80s work as 1 so games loading, etc are faster and then can drag and drop on the 300gig for storage?

[Brother Esau]

Yes its called Raid 0... You will see a big difference with online fps games I am always 98% of the time the first person on the map. But what I generaly do is have a muti boot system and use my Raid 0 drives exclusively for gameing and of course that has windows on it as well and the norm like fire fox antivirus, crap like that. With my Raid 0 set up on HD TACH iget a burst rate of 304mb ms the only thing is the seek time on my particular drives is slow compared to the others but hey always just about first on the map is what I care about and over all they are great fo gameing for $90.00 for the 2 of them I cant complain