Upgrading bro's gaming computer

[yh125d]

Hey all, I'm going to be rebuilding my brother's gaming rig after christmas, with a budget of ~$350 for a new CPU/MB/ram/GPU/PSU

I have the ram, GPU and power supply all picked out, and *had* decided on a e5200 and a Gigabyte EP43-DS3L for the processor, but then I got to looking at AMD's offerings in this price range.

Some alternatives I've found are a X2 6400+, or a Phenom 8450/8650 on a Biostar TA780G board.

If I went with the E5200, I'd probably overclock it to 3.0 or so for him, and probably a moderate OC on the AMD chips too. What kind of performance difference could I expect between these procs? How do newer AMD's and this motherboard overclock? I wouldn't do anything radical, maybe a 10-20% OC. I know Intel pretty well but I've been mostly ignorant of AMD's offerings since I switched my Athlon 4000+ for a E4300 back in the day.


His current computer has (as best as I can remember) a athlon 3200 barton, 1gb of ram, and a 6600gt AGP. The rig will be used mostly for WoW and day to day activities, but I threw in a 9800gt for him in case he gets into anything newer. Everything will be done at 1280x1024, and I'd feel better doing this for him with the 775 platform, as in my mind it offers more upgrade possibility in the future without replacing the whole system (theres still a lot of headroom CPU wise on LGA775)

 

[DSF]

I'd say 775 is your least upgradeable option, seeing as Intel has already moved on to a new socket. AMD's new CPUs are supposed to work in their current motherboards. On the other hand, I would say that Intel is probably your better bet in terms of performance right now.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Wait for some tier 1 reviews on the new Phenom II coming out about the time you are doing your build

 

[yh125d]

Yeah, because Phenom II would fit in the price range

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Originally posted by: yh125d
Yeah, because Phenom II would fit in the price range

I think his point is that a Phenom 2 would work in an AM2 or whatever AMD's current socket is. This would provide your bro an upgrade path down the road if he wants it assuming the Phenom II's are decent performers . On the other hand, Intel's 775 socket is a dead platform.

Personally I'd go with the 5200. I say this because most people that I've seen are predicting the Phenom II to be on par with the current Core 2 Quads so the upgradabiliity is kind of a moot point. You have an upgrade path either way.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
I think his point is that a Phenom 2 would work in an AM2 or whatever AMD's current socket is. This would provide your bro an upgrade path down the road if he wants it assuming the Phenom II's are decent performers . On the other hand, Intel's 775 socket is a dead platform.

Ph2 will only work on selected AM2+ motherboards, choose wisely if you decide to go this route.

S775 is dead, correct. At least, sort of. It won't die quite like s939 did on the AMD side, Intel will continue cranking out those chips for at least another year. I'll throw in another vote for e5200 with an upgrade to Q9550 or whatever fast quad is out in a year or two when needed. Just make sure to get a solid motherboard from one of the top tier makers so you will be assured of BIOS updates to support any newer processors that are launched (for example, I hear Intel plans a series of 65W quads Q1/2 of 2009).

Keep in mind that most of today's games barely max out a fast dual core let alone needing the processing power of a quad (very little difference in most games - benchmarks - this also tells you why we don't recommend AMD chips of this generation for gaming). So your bro will be happy today with an overclocked dual and can step up to a faster quad and a better GPU next year and keep trucking along.

EDIT: I seem to recall Intel has a price drop planned for early Q1 2009 (e5200 dropping to like $60 or something). Might be worth waiting for if it's set for January.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Guys, he's talking about for his brother to play World of Warcraft.

If you want to upgrade him to something better and not just waste the money on something that will supply way more power than is needed by your brother's intended use, then don't bother with all the new stuff that will cost you the premium new-tech price. Get yesteryear. You could go Dualcore, but then again, you can get Quadcore for so cheap now. For WoW, the biggest changes you'll see will happen with a newer GPU and more system memory (RAM). WoW eats RAM alive, so having a ton of it will help out. Also, faster drives helps for WoW's loading of tons of tiny files to be cached to said RAM.

So if you want an inexpensive but powerful gaming machine for your brother to upgrade to, consider the following:

AMD Phenom 9850 Black edition (overclocks on air to 3+ ghz easily, it's unlocked)
ATI HD4870 (it's sub $200) or the nVidia GTX260 (again, sub $200).
Raptor HDD, or two 7200rpm drives in RAID0; speeds loading of files and speeds reads for RAM to soak it up for use in MMO's.
4+ gigs of RAM (get 8 if you can; it's so cheap, and WoW will use it).
Vista 64 as the OS.

Very best,

 

[Denithor]

MVX, you say not to buy something overpowered in one sentence and then in the next tell him to get an X4? Seriously? C'mon...