Help with a new build

[bubbajohn]

I have an old machine that I built in 03 and lately the MB took a dive. It was an epox 8kha+. It was very good to me, but as I look for new, I don't really even see epox as a brand any longer. I want too start with a cpu. I am hearing about the quad cores , but that they are really only a doubled dual core. I am looking for something that is not going to bog down, play my games (Mafia, battlefront, etc) and handle them completely. I also am seeing that right now intel is the way to go, but I want to stick with AMD. I need advice with cpu, MB, and video card. Any advice would be very helpful and appreciated, thanks.

 

[MarcVenice]

People will want to know a budget ? And staying loyal to AMD isn't necesarily a bad thing, but where does it get you ? Nowhere, if you ask me, AMD isn't going to reward that loyalty, and if Intel gives you better bang for buck, it be unwise to stick with AMD.

 

[bubbajohn]

Well I havn't figured a budget, I guess the only thing I can say is that I am not looning for the top notch equipment, somewhere is the upper middle ground. As far as AMD, I have just had good luck, that is all. Ihave the XP1900 cpu now, am not interested in OC'ing and it has been real good. If you want to chime in on Intel, go ahead, it gives me more to look at, but I don't see it as being a big issue.

Thanks again...

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
People will want to know a budget ? And staying loyal to AMD isn't necesarily a bad thing, but where does it get you ? Nowhere, if you ask me, AMD isn't going to reward that loyalty, and if Intel gives you better bang for buck, it be unwise to stick with AMD.

 

[DSF]

If you're looking at what most people are going to define as the upper-midrange, Intel is killing AMD right now.

My recommendation is that you stroll over to the General Hardware forum, take a look at some threads to see what people are buying (and how much it all costs) and then start a thread of your own. To help us help you, fill out the questions in Blain's stickied thread over there.

The more specific you can be, the more specific we can be.

 

[scheibler1]

You should consider ocing...I didn't want to eitehr, but I couldn't deny the bang for the buck and how EASY it was to get a 1ghz oc completely stable!

Here is my ocing rig suggestion:
Intel E2180 cpu $80 can oc to an almost guaranteed 3ghz
Any DDR2 pc6400 2x1gb memory
Gigabyte P35-DS3L or Abit IP35 mobo
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF

Or for a non ocing rig
Intel E8400
Any DDR2 pc6400 2x1gb memory
Gigabyte P35-DS3L or DS3R

As far as a video card, it depends on what resolution you play at and how much you want to spend

You should seriously look into ocing...there is a step by step guide and literally takes 5min

 

[bubbajohn]

OK, well sorry, I guess I am kinda in the wrong spot, didn't really know how to navigate right off. This site has so much stuff, kinda confusing. Look, I am gonna spend whatever, maybe 700, maybe 1000 if that is what it takes. I have a 21 inch flatscreen, wireless keyboard/mouse. Lian Li case I will reuse. I have a 500w power supply. I am not opposed to reusing,or getting new if need be. I have an 80g western dig hard drive and a 250g maxtor that is newer yet failing. I am interested in SATA. dont know much about it, and am seeing that many of the new MB's have connections for several. I prefer AMD, and don't really want to mess with overclocking. I see the advantages, but don't really want to mess with getting things hot. I have had issues with that and my video card. I prefer NVidia. I actually had a chaintech ti4200. The fan failed and so I replaced it with an XFX 5200FX. The latter is junk as far as I am concerned. I cannot get the performance out of it that I had with my 4200. This is the main reason I am here. It sucks to have laggy games and video. It drives me crazy. I am interested in what I have seen as far as bridging cards goes, but am content to just spend 2 or 300 and get a single good card. Don't know whats hot right now. I have crucial ram and have been very happy with that. I do know that corsair is awesome, but don't need that. Last time I did a build, I went with about 100 per component. I see shooting for that general target again, but if spending an extra 50 bucks means getting a superior component, than so be it. I see that most of the folks here are very technical, and would appreciate your input. Narrowing it down and having choices will be my job.

 

[heyheybooboo]

You could ask a Mod to move this thread by simply posting here ...

An Athlon 64 X2 5400+ 2.8GHz AM2 65W is a good start at $95

The intel e21xx is a good proc but would need to be OC'ed 20-30% to be roughly equivalent.

On the higher end Intel whomps AMD.

Your $100 guideline generally works - but if you want a 'primo' mid-range video card $150-$170 would be better. $200 would rock yah

 

[DSF]

I get the feeling that you don't want to shortchange yourself, but the less you spend on this the happier you'll be. With that in mind, here's what I'd propose:

Motherboard: Abit IP35-E ($60)

CPU: Intel E4500 ($125) or Intel E8400 ($200-240).
The E8400 is better, but the E4500 is no slouch, and if you have a Microcenter near you it's only $99 in-store. That deal isn't available online though. If you ever decide to overclock, you can squeeze another 800 MHz to 1GHz out of either one of these chips. Core2Duos overclock very well.

RAM: 4GB of A-DATA DDR2-800, G.Skill DDR2-800, Mushkin DDR2-800.
Really, any decent DDR2-800 will be fine for you.

Video Card: 8800GT or 8800GTS 512MB are going to be the two most common recommendations. The 9600GT is slightly less expensive, but slightly lower performance as well.
ATI's notable offerings are the HD3870 and the HD3850.

 

[imported_smirk]

I too am in the process of replacing my ancient PIII/650 machine with something that can do more than play mine sweeper. DSF, your recommendations help out a lot -- thanks!

I was already looking at the Abit IP35-E, and also the 8800GTS, just like you suggested. The E4500 looks great to me from a price perspective, but I'm a little scared off by what appears to me to be a measly 2 MB L2 cache. Will that chip be able to play modern games? I'm not a hard core gamer, but I'd like to play once in a while. Do you think it's worth it saving the $60-$70 over something like a Conroe E6550? Also, I bet both the original poster and I wold be happy to do some casual overclocking (i.e. something easy that doesn't require $100+ in cooling mods) -- not sure if either CPU overclocks better than another, though.

Thanks!

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: smirk
I too am in the process of replacing my ancient PIII/650 machine with something that can do more than play mine sweeper. DSF, your recommendations help out a lot -- thanks!

I was already looking at the Abit IP35-E, and also the 8800GTS, just like you suggested. The E4500 looks great to me from a price perspective, but I'm a little scared off by what appears to me to be a measly 2 MB L2 cache. Will that chip be able to play modern games? I'm not a hard core gamer, but I'd like to play once in a while. Do you think it's worth it saving the $60-$70 over something like a Conroe E6550? Also, I bet both the original poster and I wold be happy to do some casual overclocking (i.e. something easy that doesn't require $100+ in cooling mods) -- not sure if either CPU overclocks better than another, though.

Thanks!

The 2MB L2 isn't a big concern. Even at stock speeds the E4500 will handle games like Crysis just fine. For today's graphically complex games, the video card is usually the limiting factor. And yes, I think the E4500 offers much better price/performance than the E6550, which is not a very good buy.

The E4500 can be overclocked on stock cooling. For the sake of low noise I bought a <$30 aftermarket cooler, and mine is sitting at 2.93GHz, which isn't even pushing the chip.

 

[Markfw]

Well, I see lots of good recommendations here. And you really should keep an open mind to Intel, as AMD right now offers nothing except at the low-mid to bottom end without OC'ing, and totally looses with even a mild OC, as the AMD's DON'T OC much. You can take most Intel CPU's, not even touch the vcore (which is the killer) and just up the speed quite a bit. The only OC I am fairly familiar with (with no vcore) is a Q6600 goes to 2.8-3.0 a lot of the time.

This is coming from someone that had 12 AMD rigs last year at this time.

 

[imported_smirk]

Originally posted by: DSF

The 2MB L2 isn't a big concern. Even at stock speeds the E4500 will handle games like Crysis just fine. For today's graphically complex games, the video card is usually the limiting factor. And yes, I think the E4500 offers much better price/performance than the E6550, which is not a very good buy.

The E4500 can be overclocked on stock cooling. For the sake of low noise I bought a <$30 aftermarket cooler, and mine is sitting at 2.93GHz, which isn't even pushing the chip.

That's great, thank you! Which would you recommend: the E4500 for $99 (2.2 GHz), E2200 for $89 (2.2 GHz), or E2180 for $79 (2.0 Ghz)? Is the E4500 a better chip than the E2200? I'm not clear on why they'd make two chips so similar and then brand one as a Pentium instead of a Core 2 Duo. Intel's site makes them look identical, except for the L2! From what I've been reading on NewEgg, they all overclock really well, although there seem to be more OC-related posts with the E2180 and E2200 -- not sure why.

Thank you!

 

[shamans]

AMD systems are better for certain situations...usually involving cheap systems that will be used for simple everyday usage (office-type applications, web surfing, etc). On the low-end, they're a better buy if you don't overclock or if you can accept a mild overclock. Often, I find the low-end AM2 motherboards to be more feature rich.

Here's a recent configuration I built (about 2 months ago) around AMD that was pretty good. I built 3 of these systems and they performed more or less identical to each other.

AMD x2 4000+ (2.1 ghz overclocked to 2.7-2.8 ghz)
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H
OCZ 2GB Platinum Revision 2 Dual Channel (4-4-4-15) DDR2 800

Overclocking was done on stock cooling and stock voltages.

So as you can see, this system is already quite good for most people and is dirt cheap. Those 3 parts combined cost me $185 (after $30 rebate) on my local store. That motherboard has integrated video with surroundview functionality allowing you to use up to 4 displays when combined with a PCIE 16x graphics card.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: smirk
That's great, thank you! Which would you recommend: the E4500 for $99 (2.2 GHz), E2200 for $89 (2.2 GHz), or E2180 for $79 (2.0 Ghz)? Is the E4500 a better chip than the E2200? I'm not clear on why they'd make two chips so similar and then brand one as a Pentium instead of a Core 2 Duo. Intel's site makes them look identical, except for the L2! From what I've been reading on NewEgg, they all overclock really well, although there seem to be more OC-related posts with the E2180 and E2200 -- not sure why.

Thank you!

You wouldn't go wrong with any one of those. With an E4500 at $125 I'd strongly consider the E2180, but with the E4500 being only $99, I'd probably go with it. The cache isn't a huge deal, but it does count for something.