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Building gaming machine early Feb. - AMD or Intel? Dual or QUAD? Coke or Pepsi?

I

imported_teh

Junior Member
Really having a difficult time! Pretty much my comp is 4 years old and I've been out of the game for a while and I don't know if I want to build an Intel E8400 machine with 4GB 1333 RAM or go AMD 940 and sacrifice RAM speed. Also, can someone please explain to me RAM speed and overclocking and why I should/shouldn't worry about going AMD over intel? Here's what I am working with

-Intel E8400 (or any dual core): Supposedly sweet spot for gaming, can always upgrade to a quad later on if necessary. But is it too late for the deuce? More games are supporting quad, for example GTA4 apparently runs much better on 4 cores as opposed to 2. Faster RAM is supported but comes with price premium... isn't slower RAM better for overclocking anyway? a 3.8 overclock would be reasonable enough..

-i7: that is out of the question

-AMD Phenom II X4 940: the next best thing to i7 as far as quad goes and decent boards for less than $100 exist. Good overclocker too... what attracts me is the stock HSF is said to be of good quality, whereas Intel apparently puts POS stock cooling on theirs.


My bad if I'm confusing but pretty much from what I understand, an E8400 would be perfectly fine for Crysis and gaming down the road, the intel boards support faster RAM. Plus they hit 3.8 easy, right? On the other hand AMD boards don't support the latest RAM.


summary: AMD 940 + mobo + RAM is about the same price as Intel E8400 + mobo + RAM and I dont know what to do

would like to keep the machine under $1000
 
AMD 940 + mobo + RAM is about the same price as Intel E8400 + mobo + RAM
Click to expand...

That math is a bit fuzzy to me. Can you fill in your mobo & RAM variables? I think you can find 'decent' (which is very subjective phrasing) mobo/RAM at a similar price point for both platforms, but a 940 is definately more than a E8400.
 
Originally posted by: teh
AMD 940 + mobo + RAM is about the same price as Intel E8400 + mobo + RAM and I dont know what to do
Click to expand...

The very first thing you do is give an itemized list of the 940 & E8400 configurations, right down to the model number for each part.

 
thanks batuchka, what i had configured originally is pretty close to what you provided. chose the ASUS M3N72-D combo instead though... and thinking about getting a GTX 260 (216) Superclocked over the 4870. appreciate it, totally forgot about the combo options. should i order some Arctic silver 5, even if ill be using stock cooling? i remember when i originally got this P4 the heatsink had this thermal tape that made me wanna puke all over it
 
Originally posted by: teh
thanks batuchka, what i had configured originally is pretty close to what you provided. chose the ASUS M3N72-D combo instead though... and thinking about getting a GTX 260 (216) Superclocked over the 4870. appreciate it, totally forgot about the combo options. should i order some Arctic silver 5, even if ill be using stock cooling? i remember when i originally got this P4 the heatsink had this thermal tape that made me wanna puke all over it
Click to expand...

There's no reason to use aftermarket thermal goop with a stock heatsink. It won't make enough difference to matter. That's true for i7 also.
 
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