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$1,700.00 to spend to build a new system

A

avenqer

Junior Member
note:

Your old sytem is a SLOT A Athlon 700

You want everything to run like a screaming banshee...

your largest hard drive is an OLD 13GB

You do have an Antec SOHO server case w/ TRUE430W PSU

You only want to run from the stock hs/f of your retail CPU

You know with your budget that it'll take you MONTHS just to save for another $100.00

What would you get?

oh and You LOVE NEWEGG and wouldnt venture anywhere else that doesnt have the reputation and speed of them.

Hoping this'll give me an insight as to what to do

So frustrated last night I thought of this system:
SLI $200 board
two BFG GeForce 6800GT OC $920.00
3200+ 939 90nm $196.00 (Retail for hs/f)
was considering 138 for value ram PC3200 but I know that overclocking is going to have to be an option so thought a budget of $280.00 for memory would be good.
But if value ram dual channel can go with overclock to 2.4 then would go with value ram and a 10kRPM 74GB HD 180.00
Total = 1634.00 with value/ 1776.00 with 280 budget for ram (over limit)
appreciate input... very frustrating trying to get best performace on a budget.
I've been crunching numbers for days and every scenario just gives me a headache

 
You may want to consider an alternate route for the Hard Drive... 180 dollars for only 74 gigs is ridiculous.... im sorry to all the raptor users out there... I know they are fast and all but if you can get about double the space for $80 less why not? 74gigs is nothing these days. I just got a Samsung 160 gig SATA, my friend has 2 of them... love it... As far as the RAM goes that is for a gig of RAm right? Less than that you will be severely crippled and you don't really need more. That is just my $0.02
 
 
MB
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-180-068&depa=1 $122.00

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-498&depa=1 $281.00

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-145-524&depa=1 $274.00

GPU
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-150-067&depa=1 $490.00

HDD
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-318&depa=1 two of these $132.90

DVD-R
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-152-035&depa=1 $63.99

That comes out to about $1370.00

I know everyone who is looking into new equipment today thinks man "I NEED SLI!!" when really a single pci-x has yet to be pushed to the max and coming from your previous machine you will be very happy with the setup. I am running the AGP version of the Soltek board I wish the PCI-e one was available a month ago or I would have bought it. A great board for oc'ing to if you ever wantred to push it a little my board is running a 3200+ @2750mhz which is really nice.
Happy hunting!

 
I am sorry to point this out, but WTF is there SLI on a budget system?!?

SLI does incredibly close to zero for performance right now, even on a much higher end system than you have planned!

If you want the SLI capable motherboard, that's great, but don't waste that money on two GTs right now.

If later you uprade to a CPU that could actually take advantage of two GTs, then sure, go for it.

 
well, how can I do that with 1,700 then

if you are refering to 1024x768 and 1280x1024, yes I know SLI is useless for that but I'm looking for 1600x1200 and I'd find it a hard argument that even though the 3500 on down wil be the bottleneck, how it still wont make an improvement overall.

and within a year, those 600 dollar bad boys should be tamed by then, easier to upgrade a CPU then to fork out for two video cards when you are on a budget.

Guess what I'm saying is I'm preparing for DA FUT-CHA

and even though the 6800's will lose value, price they also will lose availabilty and I have always had an easier time finding and older retail CPU than an old retail video card.

sorry to offend, if I did, definitely not intended.





 
I know everyone who is looking into new equipment today thinks man "I NEED SLI!!" when really a single pci-x has yet to be pushed to the max and coming from your previous machine you will be very happy with the setup.
Click to expand...

Well, I will have to be the voice of disagreement here concerning SLI. Having used a 6800GT oced to Ultra speeds and an X800XT PE I can tell you that SLI does offer advantages. I'm assuming that if you're willing to pay a lot for gpus than you're probably planning on gaming at decent resolutions like 1600x1200 or above. With all the eye-candy turned up and AA/AF set to max FarCry would bring my two AGP cards to their knees. Even playing multiplayer at those settings my SLI setup doesn't break a sweat. If you want to try HDR in that game at high res than SLI definetely has advantages over a single card.

There are a few other games out there that will seriously tax a single gpu when you crank up the res and eye-candy and who pays $400-500 for a gpu and doesn't want to crank everything up.

SLI is more expensive but you can stay within your budget of $1700. Watch for deals at Chumbo.com. I got my two 6800GTs with a PSU for $850. I sold the PSU for $55 so I ended up paying ~$800 total for the cards. I know EVGA is selling 6800GTs for $400 shipped if you look in the Hot Deals section.

As far as your cpu limiting you, I'm going to call BS. If you decided to game at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 with no AA/AF then yes, your cpu would be the limiting factor. But at 1600x1200 with everything cranked up a 3000-3500+ oced a bit will be just fine. I ran some tests a while back with my X800XT PE with different levels of ocing. Benching FarCry at max settings I think I gained like 2-3fps with a 3500+ oced to 2.6GHz vs. 2.2GHz. HL2 would probably see a small improvement from a faster cpu but again at max settings it won't be noticeable. Doom3 is very gpu limited so it wouldn't show much improvement either.

Not trying to be a donk or anything just pointing out that even though it is expensive, SLI does offer advantages over a single gpu setup.

I also second the motion for a better PSU if you decide to go with SLI. OCZ, Enermax, Sparkle, and a few others have some great PSUs with more than 30amps on the 12V rail. It's safer to go with a single 12V rail PSU at this point. I really powerful dual rail might be ok but it seems kind of hit and miss from what I've read. Just make sure you get a quality brand with >25Amps on the 12V rail and preferably one with a 24-pin btx connector.
 
Originally posted by: n7
I am sorry to point this out, but WTF is there SLI on a budget system?!?

SLI does incredibly close to zero for performance right now, even on a much higher end system than you have planned!

If you want the SLI capable motherboard, that's great, but don't waste that money on two GTs right now.

If later you uprade to a CPU that could actually take advantage of two GTs, then sure, go for it.
Click to expand...

I'm blind as a bat... LOL
exactly...
 
Check my sig, I got it all for about 1500, from newegg mostly (but I bought a Monarch combo for all the free crap). Speaking of which, I checked my tracking and it's all coming today! A day early! Hell yeah for newegg and Fedex. Now, all we need to see is if they destroyed it.
 
You need an os, add >$89. You need a optical drive, add >$50. If you don't have a kick ass monitor add >$350 to appreciate your sli. Got a nice keyboard, mouse, speakers/ headphones?... add more.
 
Originally posted by: avenqer
note:

Your old sytem is a SLOT A Athlon 700

You want everything to run like a screaming banshee...

your largest hard drive is an OLD 13GB

You do have an Antec SOHO server case w/ TRUE430W PSU

You only want to run from the stock hs/f of your retail CPU

You know with your budget that it'll take you MONTHS just to save for another $100.00

What would you get?

oh and You LOVE NEWEGG and wouldnt venture anywhere else that doesnt have the reputation and speed of them.

Hoping this'll give me an insight as to what to do

So frustrated last night I thought of this system:
SLI $200 board
two BFG GeForce 6800GT OC $920.00
3200+ 939 90nm $196.00 (Retail for hs/f)
was considering 138 for value ram PC3200 but I know that overclocking is going to have to be an option so thought a budget of $280.00 for memory would be good.
But if value ram dual channel can go with overclock to 2.4 then would go with value ram and a 10kRPM 74GB HD 180.00
Total = 1634.00 with value/ 1776.00 with 280 budget for ram (over limit)
appreciate input... very frustrating trying to get best performace on a budget.
I've been crunching numbers for days and every scenario just gives me a headache
Click to expand...

Should you really be doing this then...
 
 
Originally posted by: avenqer
note:

Your old sytem is a SLOT A Athlon 700

You want everything to run like a screaming banshee...
Click to expand...

Compared to that, a Celeron D will scream.

your largest hard drive is an OLD 13GB
Click to expand...

Cool, buy a big hard drive. Don't buy that overpriced Raptor, a 250GB drive is going to be more useful, and nearly as fast due to higher density.

You do have an Antec SOHO server case w/ TRUE430W PSU

You only want to run from the stock hs/f of your retail CPU
Click to expand...

Why? If you can get more performance with a better one, and you are spending $1700 (which is twice as much as you need for an ok PC, why not get a good heatsink and fan?

You know with your budget that it'll take you MONTHS just to save for another $100.00

What would you get?
Click to expand...

Unless I was making $100k/year, I would shave $500 off my budget and get a PC with 85% of the performance and spend that $500 in 18 month's time when you actually need it.


So frustrated last night I thought of this system:
SLI $200 board
two BFG GeForce 6800GT OC $920.00
Click to expand...

I have heard some bad things about SLI boards, specifically that SLI only benefits a few games, and actually slows down others. So up to half that budget is wasted. I believe anandtech is publishing an exposé on this soon. Unless you have money to burn, $920 is literally insanity. What are you going to actually play on this system? The fact is that if you have a 900MHz Athlon, you will have no idea what playing games on a reasonable system (Athlon 64+ plus a 6600GT is actually like). I have a 9600 PRO graphics card, and it plays games pretty damn good! Doom 3 is still scary (although a repetitive game) and has full detail, although not max resolution. Despite 1600x1200 aa, af, and whatever justification people are giving for insane graphics setups, you can play almost all games at max resolution with the aforementioned 6600GT... To do these things justice you are going to need a $500 monitor, which you haven't budgeted for. And why are you paying an extra $160 (on two cards) for OC cards? I doubt you need the performance, and you could just save that $160, and overclock it yourself.

3200+ 939 90nm $196.00 (Retail for hs/f)
was considering 138 for value ram PC3200 but I know that overclocking is going to have to be an option so thought a budget of $280.00 for memory would be good.
Click to expand...

If you're overclocking, why not get a nice heatsink and save some money on that RAM and just used memory dividers. The expensive RAM will give you maybe 2% performance increase for an extra $150. So why bother?

I think you will get a much better overall result by just a regular Athlon 64, nforce 4 939 mboard, a nice screen, DVD burner, and then a $250 set of speakers. With a nice set of Klipsch speakers, you will enjoy your games much better (a true cinematic experience) than having two overpriced graphics cards, one of which isn't doing anything.
 
 
Keep Case and PSU

$500 ATI 850XT OC to XTPE minimum
$120 2 x 512MB Buffalo B-line
$150 DFI Ultra board
$150 A64 3000 OC FX-55
$500 NEC 22" CRT
$100 For 160GB Seagate
$60 for NEC DVD buner

=$1580
 
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