New Gaming Machine - WoW

[MOTU]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.

• -Gaming, mostly World of Warcraft MMO, but I would like to play some newer games once in a while, but my focus will be Warcraft at the moment;
  Would like to be ready for Starcraft 2 whenever it comes out, but that's secondary and would be willing to spend on a minor upgrade when it comes out.
  
  -I use a lot of addons when playing WoW, and my current AGP setup is running at a terrible 10FPS, sometimes 5, it's unplayable in raids. I would like to see 40+ FPS during 25 person raids, 60 would be godly

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% range

• -$800 Tops, $700 if possible
  -I will be using my monitor, case and 550Wpower supply.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

• -US (usually buy off Newegg)

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.

• -I've always used ATI cards and AMD processors, but really it all comes down to the msot bang for the buck.
  
  -I would like to have an SLI/Crossfire ready setup, and purchase a second video card later, but need advice whether this fits my budget and if it's worthwhile

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

• 
  -Monitor (1680x1050)
  -Case
  -Power Supply
  -DVD Drive
  -KB, Mouse, etc.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.

• -None similar

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.

• -Not until I need to

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?

• -by End of February 09

Thanks in Advanced

 

[krnmastersgt]

Off the top of my head, without doing price checks since the net is crawling at the moment:
CPU & Motherboard: AMD Phenom II 940 (or 920 if theres no room in the budget) + Biostar 790GX combo
Video Card: ATI Radeon 4850
Ram: Whatever the cheapest 4gb set with free shipping is, rebates are your call

As far as I can tell, that's all you really need. Depending on the quality of your PSU, you might want to get a new one but that aside, these are the only components you'll need. Should total around $500 or so.

 

[MOTU]

Yeah I was thinking along the same lines...

I was thinking about the same setup, except for the motherboard (am I going overkill on it? I wanted it for the crossfire as future-proofing, but unsure whether its worth it or not)

• AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor Model HDZ940XCGIBOX - Retail
  
  ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
  
  G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ - Retail
  
  SAPPHIRE 100245L Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
  
  
  Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

TOTAL $680.96

which is perfect price range, I will check my PSU wattage and in case my PSU doesn't cut it, I would get the Phenom 920 (and use the $40 difference+wallet money to upgrade PSU)

• As stated, I will be using my
  -Monitor (1680x1050)
  -Case
  -Power Supply
  -DVD Drive
  -KB, Mouse, etc.

Is there anything I am forgetting?

Thanks

 

[vicodin500]

You can get 140 more GB of hard drive space for $5 >.>.... The 640 GB version of the same hard drive brand I mean.

 

[Syran]

CPU: Phenom II 920 $189 (keeping the budget down, upgrade to a 940 for $40 more)
Video Card: HIS Radeon 4870 1GB $224.99 - $25 MIR
(Combo Deal - $20)
HDD: WD 640GB Caviar Blue $59.99
Motherboard: DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH $169.99 (motherboard Anandtech just used for their evaluation with crossfire
Memory: CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5 $56.99 - $30 MIR

Total: $680.96 - $55 MIR = $625.96 + shipping (Was showing $9 to GA)
Well under budget, should be a nice machine too

 

[krnmastersgt]

What vicodin500 said, the 640gb Caviar Black is only $5 more than the 500gb model.

Now Crossfire isn't typically all that great a solution especially when the next-gen cards come out and all, however it is your choice if you want to spend the extra cash for a CF capable board. If you still want a CF board, here's a nice combo that has 3 PCI-E slots instead of the 4 on the board you chose (I very much doubt you'd be on a serious budget if you had money for 4 cards) PhII 940 + Asus M3A78-T, $338 for both.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Do you currently have a gaming machine?

I've heard a TOE card does wonders in WoW - for some older machines it drops ping by 10 and fps stays constant ...from what I've heard

 

[krnmastersgt]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
Do you currently have a gaming machine?

I've heard a TOE card does wonders in WoW - for some older machines it drops ping by 10 and fps stays constant ...from what I've heard

Well before I'd ever suggest buying an NIC, I'd suggest something called the Crazyman mod, where you create ramdisk and load your ethernet drivers via the ramdisk for near instant responses.

 

[MOTU]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
Do you currently have a gaming machine?

I've heard a TOE card does wonders in WoW - for some older machines it drops ping by 10 and fps stays constant ...from what I've heard

Yeah my PC is 4 years old now... so I think it's time for a change.

As for crossfire, it's not a big deal, just seems like a sound way of futureproofing, but if I could save up on a MB, and use that money for a better vid card+processor, I'd be willing to go that way.

Syran's list seems awesome, and I'm thinking of going that way, but switching the Motherboard/CPU (DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH + Phenom 920) to the combo suggested by krnmastersgt (PhII 940 + Asus M3A78-T)

this gets me a total of $687.88
-$55 in rebates

I've always used custom coolers, but this time I believe I'll go with stock HSF, as my OC'ing days are not what they used to be.

Is the difference between the 4870 and 4850 worth the extra $80?

 

[krnmastersgt]

Not really sure how graphically intensive WoW is going to be on your system, the 4850 is a pretty good card for the majority of games at 1680x1050, at 1920x1200 it becomes the 4870 1Gb's arena with the limited memory bandwidth on the 4850 stifling it at that resolution, otherwise it's a great card.

 

[MOTU]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
Not really sure how graphically intensive WoW is going to be on your system, the 4850 is a pretty good card for the majority of games at 1680x1050, at 1920x1200 it becomes the 4870 1Gb's arena with the limited memory bandwidth on the 4850 stifling it at that resolution, otherwise it's a great card.

Yeah I found this 4870 (512 mb) as a happy median:

SAPPHIRE 100259L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5

which for less memory that the HIS Radeon 4870 1GB would save me $35, that I could use on some extra RAM

Last thing I remember the FPS gained from extra video memory at the moment wss minimal. Do correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

[krnmastersgt]

You're wrong at 1920x1200 and higher, for 1680x1050 its an iffy guess, there's definitely an improvement but usually at that res it's 70 to 85 fps, which makes absolutely no difference.

 

[yh125d]

As far as how GPU limited WoW isn't, at 1920x1080 with all maxed settings, there is only 2-3 fps difference between a 8800GT and a GTX260. However, the difference between my e7200 at 2.5gHz and at 3.5 was about 12 FPS.


The same held true both at lower resolutions and at lower graphic settings. WoW just doesn't use more GPU power than ~8800/9800GT/4830 territory. At that point it's much more limited by CPU. A quad will help, as WoW will run off two cores while everything in the background will run on the other two