Compulsory Budget Upgrade

[rockmand]

Basically, I tried upgrading my GPU to an 512Mb AGP x1650 Pro for a little extra fps in games, only to somehow fry my Mobo. I was hesistant to fully upgrade, but now I might as well.

Here's my pending upgrade:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 AM2 X2 4800+
I'd like to go Intel, but AMD still wins by price/performance ratio. Also, will socket AM2 being going the way of 939 or is it here to stay?

GPU: Sapphire HD 2600XT 256Mb GDDR3 PCI-E
I think if I go AMD then I should go ATI (or is my logic flawed?). Also, I figure I might as well get a DirectX 10 card. While the x1950 is a better card, it's still only DirectX 9c and the 2900XT is out of my price range.

Mobo: ASUS M2R32-MVP Crossfire Xpress 3200
This seems like a quality mobo designed for Crossfire as an upgrade alternative for my GPU. However, if there is an equally good budget mobo out there, I'd consider it.

RAM: Patriot Extreme Performance DDR2 (2x1Gb) PC2-6400 Low Latency

Any suggestions?

 

[MarcVenice]

HD2600xt sucks for dx10 games, so no real reason to buy it, unless it lets you run HDTV without having the CPU break a sweat. Otherwise, x1950xt or pro is the way to go.

AM2 is the way to go, s939 is dead. How much does the ram cost? How much does the cpu cost? If you can buy a s775 mobo and a e4400 for the same money you might wanna go Intel, if you're into overclocking that is. Otherwise AMD might be a little cheaper because of the mobo.

 

[rockmand]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
HD2600xt sucks for dx10 games, so no real reason to buy it, unless it lets you run HDTV without having the CPU break a sweat. Otherwise, x1950xt or pro is the way to go.

So, will a x1950 hold me back once DirectX 10 games become the norm? Would using two 2600XT's in Crossfire in the future make up for its poor DirectX 10 performance?

AM2 is the way to go, s939 is dead. How much does the ram cost? How much does the cpu cost? If you can buy a s775 mobo and a e4400 for the same money you might wanna go Intel, if you're into overclocking that is. Otherwise AMD might be a little cheaper because of the mobo.

The Patriot RAM is going for $79.00CDN (after a $47.00 rebate). I've read that it is a quality RAM, so this seems like a good deal.

Here's what I could find locally:

Intel:
Mobo: ASUS P5K w/ DualDDR2 1066 PCI-E x16 CrossFire ($154.95CDN)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 ($137.95CDN)
Total: $292.90CDN

AMD:
Mobo: ASUS M2R32-MVP Crossfire Xpress 3200 PCI-E s16 ($137.88CDN)
CPU: AMD Athlong 64 X2 4800+ ($119.88CDN)
Total: $257.76CDN

I know there are a whole slew of mobo's for AM2 or s775, but I'm just looking at what is more ideal for my hardware either ATI (Crossfire) or nVidia (SLI). Really, mobo's are where I'm the most lost. At least GPU's and CPU's have benchmarks. So, any advice on a specific mobo would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nickel020]

An X1950 won't hold you back, since you'll never be able to play a game in DX10 mode with a X2600 or nvidia 8600. As tests ahve shown, even the 8800 Ultra suffers a huge performance drop over DX9 in those games that offer a DX10 mode.

Don't worry about DX10, because the graphics card needed to run a proper DX10 game does not exist yet (or you can't buy it yet).

And if you overclock, go for an an Intel. The Pentium Dual Core E2140 and E2160 are very cheap, and overclock to 2.8GHz at least. At that point no overclocked AMD CPU in a similar price range will offer better performance. If you don't overclock, it doesn't make much difference 2waht you choose.
And the Pentium Dual Core are actually Core 2 Duos with just 1MB of cache, they're not actually Pentiums.

 

[MarcVenice]

Pretty much what he said. With a x2600xt you are going to be forced to play in dx9 mode anyways, and since the 1950xt or pro outperform the 2600xt in dx9, why buy it

and why do you want to buy locally? There's canadian e-tailers, right ? I think you could get it a bit cheaper. If you can overclock though, I'd go with the e4400, it will run at 2.6ghz or higher withouth a problem, beating anything AMD has to offer. And don't worry about SLI/Crossfire. It's not worth it unless you can afford 2 of the best videocards, like 8800ultra's. By the time you go SLI/Crossfire with a second substandard videocard, you are better of going with 1 single new card. Especially since sli/crossfire don't scale that well and do need a better PSU.

 

[rockmand]

Alright, you guys have convinced me. Intel it is.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 ($137.95CDN)

GPU: Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 256MB PCI-E ($157.88CDN)

Mobo: ?????

Any suggestions on a solid overclocking mobo without any bells and whistles?

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
and why do you want to buy locally? There's canadian e-tailers, right ? I think you could get it a bit cheaper.

The two big e-tailers up here are NCIX.com and TigerDirect.ca, and neither come close to my local stores, even without shipping! I even double checked with pricecanada.com and shopbot.ca.