Please review my system build. :) THANKS!!

[DaveyTN]

Case : Thermaltake VA3000BWA Tsunami Dream Tower Series Black
Power Sup: Enermax EG495P-VE SFMA ATX 2.0 (485watt)
MoBo : Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (going with this mobo for possible upgrade to sli)
Processor : AMD Athlon 4000+
Heat Sink : Thermaltake A1838
Memory : DDR (400) 3200 - 1GB (2 pcs 512) Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PRO
Hard Drive: SATA - Western Digital WD2000JD 200GB/7200-RPM/8MB-Cache
DVD/CD : NEC ND-3520A
Sound : Audigy 2 ZS
Video Card : ATI X850 XT
OS : Win XP Pro
Speakers : Logitech Z-5300e

Thanks!!

 

[imported_Kensai]

Wootage. Nice pile. Nothing I would change.

 

[bob4432]

first of all have you already bought everything? last time i did this i made some changes and the guy got all pissed beause he already bought everything, then asked for suggestions. second, if you didn't buy everything already, what are you uses for the computer?

 

[DaveyTN]

No - I haven't bought anything yet except for the speakers. My main use of the system will be for playing games - Half Life 2, and Age of Empires III when it comes out.

 

[Ike0069]

Do you realize that the X850XT cannot be run SLI?

 

[nick1985]

an SLI board with a non-SLI card?

 

[bob4432]

i agree with everything except the cpu and video card and here are my reasons.

if you read this article regarding the a64 4000 you can view benchmarks comparing it to other cpus. sure it is usually the top dog, but most of the time not by a huge percent or amount of fps. the difference in fps/% between it and a a64 3200 90nm is not huge, but the 4000 is ~$600 where the 3200 is ~$200.

this article for video cards, not as clear as the cpu article so that one is up to you.

that said, i hate to throw money away on computers because they don't hold their value, and never get the top of the line, because usually in 6mos that cpu will be quite a bit less. as far as the gpu it is up to you, i guess it would be a personal choice of should i spend ~$500 for top of the line or ~$300 for "middle" and still have good frame rates.

these are my personal opinions only

 

[Melchior]

It all depends on if your rich or if your budget conscience. If your not the former, forget about the 4000+ CPU, go with a 3000+ and overclock it to 4000+ (easy) and go with a 6800 GT/Ultra if you want the possibility for SLI in the future. Otherwise get a DFI NF4 ultra board.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: Melchior
It all depends on if your rich or if your budget conscience. If your not the former, forget about the 4000+ CPU, go with a 3000+ and overclock it to 4000+ (easy) and go with a 6800 GT/Ultra if you want the possibility for SLI in the future. Otherwise get a DFI NF4 ultra board.

Well, I wouldn't say it's "easy" to get a 3000+ to 2.4 GHz, but yes it has been done by many people. I would suggest a 3200+ for OC'ing though just to get the 10X multiplier. That could make it "easy". But please realize that the 4000+ has 1 GB L2 Cache. Can't get that out of a OC no matter how hard you try. Besides, maybe he want to OC the 4000+.

 

[DaveyTN]

Will the X850XT perform badly in the ASUS SLI board? From what I have seen in the benchmarks it looks like it performs pretty good with this combo. I'm just interested in the SLI board just to have a different upgrade path in the future - potentially.

 

[Ike0069]

The point is that you cannot run 2 X850XT's in SLI. So if you want to run SLI later on, you will have to buy 2 new VC's.

 

[bob4432]

exactly as ike0069 said, there would be no advantage of either gettng the x850xt or the sli board because later there will be better options. either get a sli type card now or don't worry about the sli board, it will be wasting your money with that combo

 

[DaveyTN]

Makes sense. So, if I'm wanting to go with the ASUS SLI MoBo, would it make more sense to go with a single NVidea GeForce 6800 Ultra right now instead of the X850XT?

 

[ShadowBlade]

yes

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Unless you're the type that runs all games at 1600x1200, highest settings, highest AA, and highest AF, you're not going to notice a difference between that $600 processor and a $150 3000+. The videocard is also overkill for the price, considering you can get ones quite a bit cheaper for hardly any loss in framerates.

 

[bob4432]

to save some money get a 6800gt an go with a 3000-3200, no sense throwing money away... talking to us just saved you ~$500

 

[DrMrLordX]

You might also want to mention which monitor you'll be using(and its specs).

 

[live2game]

I would personally get a 6800 Ultra then in 3 months get a second one