my (hope) soon to be new computer..... opinions needed....

[purerockfury]

ok so i finally found a place to purchase my parts from (payment basis i make little money to buy my parts all at once so i have to do the lay away thing). so here is what i was thinking about getting for my system. all opinions and critisizing needed. let me know if there poor choices or decent ones. just keep in mind i was looking for good parts for the money. and i'm looking to mostly game with it since i have no other talents with a comp at the moment. well, here we go:

cpu: amd fx55 or 57 depending on estimates

motherboard: ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI

ram: CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model TWINXP1024-3200XL - Retail *2 money permitting

graphics: nvidia 6800*2, the new 7800 or just a single 6800 again money permitting

sound: creative labs audigy gamer

i'm still stuck on a power source and other odds and ends. i'm also looking into lighting and all the fun things that a computer can have. like lcd's and the like. i will also in the near future of buying this machine be modding it and not just the lights i mean along the lines of what crimson sky and others do. thanks for any help and comments in advance.

[sXenoG]

Alright unless you get the 7800gtx i dont believe you need the processor you're shooting for. As for the gfx card I honestly would not bother with the 6800's my thought on it is its middle class for twice the price. I had sli 6600gt's and i out benchmark a 6800gt by about 2000 points on 3dmark05. I either say get a 6600gt (best performance for cost on the market atm) OR go all out and get the new 7800gtx. As for power supply find out what you're going to get for all your other components first so you know how much power you need. And just a senseless fact the 7800gtx consumes less power then the 6800 (not sure if its all 6800's or just liek teh gt ultra or what)

[purerockfury]

sXenoG- thanks for the input. i had no idea about the performance of the 6800's. all i really new about them was all the hype from gaming sites and the like. so i guess it will be the 7800.

i was also looking to have this computer last a few years with minimal upgrades over those years. my current computer i built in 2000 and has performed as good or better than a lot of my friends new comps. and than my brother decided to download things that neither he or myself new was safe. and now i'm lucky this comp will get online half the time.

as you can tell i've been out of the comp hardware info thing. now there have been so many changes and so much more info to go through my tiny brain gets dizzy quickly. i will have to do more searching for the graphics cards info. since like i said all the info i have gotten was all hype for the 6800's.

again thanks for the help. maybe i'll look into those 6600's while i'm at it.

[Dante]

Alright unless you get the 7800gtx i dont believe you need the processor you're shooting for. As for the gfx card I honestly would not bother with the 6800's my thought on it is its middle class for twice the price. I had sli 6600gt's and i out benchmark a 6800gt by about 2000 points on 3dmark05. I either say get a 6600gt (best performance for cost on the market atm) OR go all out and get the new 7800gtx. As for power supply find out what you're going to get for all your other components first so you know how much power you need. And just a senseless fact the 7800gtx consumes less power then the 6800 (not sure if its all 6800's or just liek teh gt ultra or what)

Purerockfury you can run your system with any of those products and get great results. There is absolutly nothing wrong with the 6800 series video cards. I have two 6800 Ultra's running SLI and I guarantee you they will out benchmark this guys 6600's on any day.

[sXenoG]

Thats cuz ur running them in SLI and i said a 6800gt. I spent 100$ less than my friends and outbenchmarked there single 6800gt by 2000. If you're going to forkover the money for 2 ultras you might as well just go for a 7800gtx. Yes sli 6800 ultras will out bench my 6600's ne day but my cards in sli beat out 1 6800gt for less money. Thats the only point I was making.

[Dante]

Thats cuz ur running them in SLI and i said a 6800gt. I spent 100$ less than my friends and outbenchmarked there single 6800gt by 2000. If you're going to forkover the money for 2 ultras you might as well just go for a 7800gtx. Yes sli 6800 ultras will out bench my 6600's ne day but my cards in sli beat out 1 6800gt for less money. Thats the only point I was making.

It's cool man. I misunderstood what you meant. You made it sound like the 6600's were a better card than the 6800's. My bad. But I would way rather have two 6800's than one 7800GTX :)

[public_eyesore]

i wouldnt, that new light thingy is awesome. I say get a dual core 3800 for the cpu and get a 7800gt which will leave room to upgrade.

[sXenoG]

Its all good dante. No i agree 6800's are better :P. May I ask why you'd choose dual 6800's over a 7800gtx tho? Both are very expensive but 7800gtx supports some new features that the 6800's do not and perform about equally.

[Malatory]

i wouldnt, that new light thingy is awesome. I say get a dual core 3800 for the cpu and get a 7800gt which will leave room to upgrade.

Dual core would one be usefull to power users. Typical gamers want the best bang for the buck, and Dual Cores wont increase there FPS right now.

I went with the Dual 6600GT on my system this last year, but that was because I could only get 1 Vid card at 1st and the 2nd came about 2 months later. If I had the cash for the 6800GT I would have gotten it at that time. I would like to get another 939 Mobo and a X2 proc. If I did that I would split my current game machine into 2. and use the standard 64 Bit machine for games and use the X2 for Coding and other CPU power hungray apps that I use.

[purerockfury]

so 2 6800 "ultras"? i think that was part of the estimate i'm getting. also noone really is saying anything about the fx55 cpu. should i really go with something else like the 3800 dual core?

i'm starting to think i should spend maybe a bit more to get the best or at least better hardware.

thanks all for the info. at least the bits i could get from your little side discussion.

[sXenoG]

Unless new games begin to utiliz dual cores (which will most likely not happen until dual core is more mainstream) a dual core will not make your computer any better for gamming. The fx55 seems to be the high end of single core atm very powerfull and bought by many gamers. Unless you get the 7800gtx than it may not be neccesary (i dont kno if its even neccesary for the 7800gtx) In a couple days ill come back and let you kno more about the fx55 i need to research it myself.

[Visionism]

If you want to spend more that's up to you but remember the law of diminishing returns that kicks in with high end hardware. You can end up spending a heck of a lot more money to get a tiny increase in performance. Suppose a given system gets 100 fps in a particular game. You can end up spending twice as much money to get 120fps. Personally I like to stay a little behind the bleeding edge and get more bang for my buck. Not to mention the added stability you get from working with mature hardware. I'll take a BIOS that has already been through a couple of revisions over one that still has bugs to be worked out.

[purerockfury]

Visionism

that's some good advice. i also don't want to be lacking when all the new stuff comes out and games and programs demand more from systems. so with your theory the 6800 ultras will be fine with a gig of ram and a 3800 dual core?

how about this instead. people post your economy and semi-economy system configs. prices up to 2500 or so. although i was told with the list i gave the guy doing this that the system will be under 1500 which sounded to me a little off but he assured me it "wiil" not get more than that. his exact words. i was thinking to myself before talking to him that the parts if i got them would cost nearly 2000 or so from places like egghead.

my list included the fx55 6800 ultra(s) the fatality mother board xls corsair ram. i still have yet to get the estimate so i don't know the exact amount yet.

so let's have your lists and see what we can come up with.

thanks all for the help and info. it's helped me to get started back into computers again.

[Malatory]

I really dont think he was saying it was bad ... I am saying its going to be a while before the games start pushing the dual core cpu's. Get the FX-55 or 53 (should be close to the same price as the dual core).

3800+ single core cost only 328.oo at Mwave (Frequency: 2.4GHz)

dual core 3800+ 379.oo ( Frequency: 2.0 GHz )

FX-55 is 789.oo

You need to check out what your getting and know what all of the numbers mean .. just because a 64 3800+ and X2 3800+ have the same numbers doesn't mean that its the same thing.

procs that you would want to mach up are 3500+ (Single core) and 4200+ (Dual Core) as they are a very close match .. Dual Core would then mean double your power and double your pleasure for those that can use SMP.

[public_eyesore]

its still gonna be a while before 64 bit processesor are being used, atleast dual core has some imeadiate advantages.