Hey All
I am looking at building a new (mainly gaming) PC, I am on a fairly tight budget, but it is a little flexible. Just wanted some advice and help.
Am going for socket 939, have settled for the 3200+, as the extra cash for the 3500+ isn?t worth it. Also 1 Gb of DDR400 Kingston Value memory, two by 512 Mb sticks. How does dual channel mem. work? Does the above memory utilize it?
As for the motherboard, it is obviously a choice between AGP and PCI Express. I am looking at the two MSI offerings, as have had very good experiences with MSI. The two choices are the K8N Neo2 Platinum, and the K8N Neo4 Ultra. However, the Neo4 seems very hard to get, how much more do you think it will cost than the Neo2? The Chaintech nforce4 on newegg is actually cheaper than the MSI Neo2, will the Neo4 be that much more expensive? I am leaning towards PCIE, but not if it is going to cost a lot more. And are the PCIE slots backward compatible, if I want to use the internal modem from my old PC?
For the graphics card, it is another decision that needs to be made. The options are :
Chaintech Apogee Geforce 6800 128Mb (AGP)
Chaintech 6600GT 128Mb (AGP or PCIE)
HIS X700Pro Turbo 256Mb (PCIE)
Geforce 6800LE 128Mb
Obviously it depends on whether I go AGP or PCIE. For AGP I presume the 6800 vanilla is the way to go, but is it worth the extra cost over the 6600GT? Also, what performance difference is there between the AGP and PCIE versions of the 6600GT? And the X700Pro turbo by HIS includes a warranted overclocking utility to push it up to X700XT levels. It is only slightly more expensive than the 6600GT, and with the 256Mb, is it the better option? And the 6800LE, haven't heard much about it, but have seen it is for sale for a little less than the 6800 vanilla. Is it any good, worth getting?
Finally, especially if I go for the PCIE option, will I need the new ATX12V spec. power supply? What is the minimum wattage I can get, given I go for a middle of the road 6600GT or X700Pro, with only one SATA hard drive and one optical drive? Obviously the aim here is to save cash, but not at the expense of strangling components of power.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I am looking at building a new (mainly gaming) PC, I am on a fairly tight budget, but it is a little flexible. Just wanted some advice and help.
Am going for socket 939, have settled for the 3200+, as the extra cash for the 3500+ isn?t worth it. Also 1 Gb of DDR400 Kingston Value memory, two by 512 Mb sticks. How does dual channel mem. work? Does the above memory utilize it?
As for the motherboard, it is obviously a choice between AGP and PCI Express. I am looking at the two MSI offerings, as have had very good experiences with MSI. The two choices are the K8N Neo2 Platinum, and the K8N Neo4 Ultra. However, the Neo4 seems very hard to get, how much more do you think it will cost than the Neo2? The Chaintech nforce4 on newegg is actually cheaper than the MSI Neo2, will the Neo4 be that much more expensive? I am leaning towards PCIE, but not if it is going to cost a lot more. And are the PCIE slots backward compatible, if I want to use the internal modem from my old PC?
For the graphics card, it is another decision that needs to be made. The options are :
Chaintech Apogee Geforce 6800 128Mb (AGP)
Chaintech 6600GT 128Mb (AGP or PCIE)
HIS X700Pro Turbo 256Mb (PCIE)
Geforce 6800LE 128Mb
Obviously it depends on whether I go AGP or PCIE. For AGP I presume the 6800 vanilla is the way to go, but is it worth the extra cost over the 6600GT? Also, what performance difference is there between the AGP and PCIE versions of the 6600GT? And the X700Pro turbo by HIS includes a warranted overclocking utility to push it up to X700XT levels. It is only slightly more expensive than the 6600GT, and with the 256Mb, is it the better option? And the 6800LE, haven't heard much about it, but have seen it is for sale for a little less than the 6800 vanilla. Is it any good, worth getting?
Finally, especially if I go for the PCIE option, will I need the new ATX12V spec. power supply? What is the minimum wattage I can get, given I go for a middle of the road 6600GT or X700Pro, with only one SATA hard drive and one optical drive? Obviously the aim here is to save cash, but not at the expense of strangling components of power.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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