new gaming pc Cheap

[raven101]

Hi all I am trying to put together a gaming pc for around 450-500 the main part i want to get is a 8800 vid card other then that I am open to suggestions . I am currently running a 7600gs card with a 3800+ 939 cpu with 4gb of ram.


Thanks

 

[myocardia]

Welcome to anandtech, raven. Assuming you mean 450-500 dollars, not pesos or rupees, you can build a decent system these days with that kind of money, as long as you aren't wanting new hard drives, optical drive(s), case, etc. For ~$100, you can get either a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L or an Abit IP35-E motherboard. 8800GT's can be had for less than $200, not including mail in rebates. And you can get 2x2 GB of PC6400 RAM for less than $100, also. That would be ~$400, leaving you $100 for a processor.

edit: Those are newegg prices, BTW.

 

[OCGuy]

Budget processor with good OC headroom:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/...E16819115052&Tpk=e7200

 

[raven101]

no I don't need anything but the cpu video card memory and motherboard. I have been looking at the forums and it seems most people are suggesting a intel chip over a amd chip for the cpu. I was most confused over the motherboard and if I would bottle neck the 8800 gt with a slower cpu

 

[krnmastersgt]

The items myocardia and Ocguy31 suggested would work very well together, no real bottleneck there, if you want to save a bit more money than instead of the E7200 go for an E2180 for about $70 from newegg, overclock that to 3ghz and the bottleneck is mainly alleviated. As of now, unless you're building extreme budget boards with integrated graphics, Intel is the way to go.

 

[raven101]

between the e7200 and the e2180 is there a big difference in performance??

 

[Martimus]

This may help you out.

 

[myocardia]

Yeah, there's a considerable difference, especially if you factor in the extra 700 Mhz that the E7200 has (if you don't overclock), or the extra ~1 Ghz, if you do overclock. Here's a link, showing the difference between an E2160 and it's two bigger brothers (at that time), with their larger caches: the benchmarks.

 

[raven101]

Thanks for the help guys I think i will be going for the e7200 the gigabyte board with 2-4 gigs of ram and the 880gt video card . I really don't see a big difference between the 8800gt and the 8800gts. Oh and the spread sheet looked good.

 

[Denithor]

I think that's your best bet.

e7200 $130
IP35-e or P35-DS3L $100
8800GT $170
2x2GB DDR2 $50-75

One issue no one has addressed yet: what power supply do you have? Make sure it's at least 400W from a good maker (Seasonic, Corsair, OCZ, Antec, etc) with plenty of amps on the 12V line.