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About LinkBacksI prefer the look and the PSU on the Anctec Sonata III with its earthwatts 500 PSU. Sensible choice?
And for the monitoe The 19" Mirai DML-519W100 i suggested above is supposed to be a very nice monitor the a small price, £110.20.
I prefer the look and the PSU on the Anctec Sonata III with its earthwatts 500 PSU. Sensible choice?
And for the monitoe The 19" Mirai DML-519W100 i suggested above is supposed to be a very nice monitor the a small price, £110.20.
These HannsG Monitors are decent ya know.
I was really suprised the first time i saw them. TBH.....most monitors between £100-£120 are all much the sameness. (HannsG make monitors for some VERY popular named brands...occassionally they sell them themselves though). Thats the only reason i went for mine rather than the LG or Daewoo.
ah fair enough. i had never seen the name b4 so i just made assumptions. Wouldnt advise such a tight case with an 8800, you might have trouble fitting it
I'd spend more on PSU, Case an Monitor and less on raw power. CPUs and Graphics cards change all the time and a easily upgraded, the PSU, Case and Monitor on the other hand will probably still be here in 4 years time.
Heres my upcoming build:
Case: NZXT Hush - £60
PSU: OCZ StealthXStream 600W - £50
Mobo: EVGA nForce 590 SLI - £60
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 5200+ - £80
GPU: ATI Sapphire x1950pro - £80
RAM: 2GB Corsair PC2-5400 - £50
HDD: 250GB Samsung Spinpoint - £35
DVD: Samsung Lightscribe DVD-RW - £18
VDU: 19" LG L194WT - £120
Leaves £47 for expansion or other stuff (keyboard, mouse, tools, postage etc)
Then you have a strong base to build off and can run all current games in high detail. After a few months the 8800 will have come down in price so you'll be able to buy one of those and sell the x1950
Personally i chose AMD because on Scan theres currently £6 difference between the Intel E4400 and AMD 5200+. A quick look at benchmarks shows theres a massive difference in performance in favour of the AMD chip(im not overclocking, otherwise i'd go for the Pentium Dual Core)
Last edited by McPhee; 11-08-2007 at 05:46 PM.
Abit IP35-E / c2d / 8800GTS system gets my vote. Good to go now and good to upgrade or overclock later.
Yep will definetly be going: Abit IP35-E / c2d / PC-6400 as the price difference is small and the performance gain is pretty big, definetly for £11 anyway and the Ram is also woth the extra £7
comparision:
Intel
Abit IP-35E, iP35 Express £64.74
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2.0 GHz £74.84
TOTAL £139.58
AMD
AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5200+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2.6GHz £81.02
Abit KN9-S, NF550 £46.91
TOTAL £127.93
ram
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 £58.33
2Gb (2X1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC5400 £51.16
As for The 8800 not so sure atm, but will obviosly try and squeeze it in by strething buget if he can, if not i think it will be the MSI 256mb 8600GTS overclocked. Its unfortunate that this £600 buget mark is so hard to build in as everything is just 1 step under a decent c2d/8800 system. pretty tough price bracket.
Last edited by tigerboyce; 11-08-2007 at 06:34 PM.
With a new monitor, case & psu unfortunately it is yeahOriginally Posted by tigerboyce
Still strongly advise against that graphics card though.
It has a massive bottleneck ont he memory bitrate (128bit) which compared to the 8800 (320) and x1950 (256) really makes it a poor contender. As has been mentioned earlier DX10 is a red herring atm and is not worth it buying midrange. Top range cards are worth it because they have such amazing DX9 performance.
If you are trying to stay in budget then go for a cheap X1950 pro as it will be better in most cases! Save up until you can make a good judgement about dx10
Last edited by Biscuit; 11-08-2007 at 06:47 PM.
Just to quickly point out; those 2 processors aren't equivalent in performance.
In terms of AMD processors the E4400 sits somewhere around the 4600+ mark but with a higher overclock potential. So the real price difference between the 2 systems is around the £35 mark before the AMD price drop next week. Add £35 to you're GPU budget and you can just about reach the 8800!
If you are going to overclock, then get an Intel chip. If not then AMD offer the better value for money, nearly every benchmark out there states this if you look at them with updated price lists
Last edited by McPhee; 11-08-2007 at 07:01 PM.
ok this is making the choices more difficult... I know for a fact that it DEFINETLY will not be overclocked. but before jumping to amd there is still the option option of dropping the 8800 for the x1950 or 8600 and spending the money on the E6420/6550 with will be faster than the AMD anyway..
Overclocking is really simple on C2D and would take very little effort to budge it up to the same level as the AMD chips. Obviously this is your call but personally i would at least consider it. Buying the X1950 pro and a faster C2D would be a very good alternative if you can afford the 8800 though
What is this systems main job going to be out of interest?
Are you looking for pure gaming value?
How much upgrading will you be doing to it?
Right at this moment in time a £600 AMD system will outperform a £600 C2D system at gaming. Theres no question about this.
The C2D chips do beat the AMD chips in some processor heavy applications though, so if gaming isn't the main use then read a few benchmarks to see which is better for you're tasks.
Also worth considering is upgradability. The C2D system will definitely have some good CPU upgrades over the next few years. So far it's unclear if the same can be said for AMD, they've reached the limit of they're current tech and aren't releasing the new stuff for another month or 2. Not much is known on it yet, including motherboard compatibility.
I think they have strongly hinted that they will work on most AM2 boards with a bios update
if dx10 isnt an issue then a 7900gs or x1950pro will suit you quite well. Any of the discussed cpus will give you plenty of headroom gaming wise so I wouldn't be terribly worried about that. imo getting a nice c2d system and good quality pc-6400 memory will give you a nice overclock anyway. The level of o/c doable on the c2d platform is such that even with the AMD price slashing the Intel seems to win out, at least in benchmarks/£ . As for gaming, there's very little in it and its mostly bottlenecked by your graphics card limitations. Case wise, I still rate the Antec 900. It can be fiddly but looks awesome and the cooling is ample, and plently of space. Personally though, I wouldn't worry about cpu speed so much and stretch the budget to include an 8800gts.
I was having a read of this: http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/426/ 8600 huge benchmarking test from guru3d, i find it quite interesting that the 8600gts's arnt actually hugely outperformed by the x1950's.
Try pages 12-20 for the results but bearing in mind the testing system is pretty beefy. its slightly annoying how there isnt any 8800 to compare to except one test has an 8800gtx, wich isnt really a usefull comparison. but they do mention the cards similar performance to a 7900/x1950 but is dissapointing compared to a 8800gts. The only problem is i think that it will be impossible to fit in a 8800 withought sacrificing on the processor.
Yes the antec 900 is a great case i have one myself, but it is a complete waste of money on this buget... £70+£50 for a PSU is no good
Okay it seems to be just going back and forward on peoples opinions and im not really getting anywhere. I think the best thing to do is if i create two different systems and then see which is better value/performance
Last edited by tigerboyce; 11-08-2007 at 08:52 PM.
ok here we go: [[Note: added Antec 900 in place of Antec sonata III+EW500psu as its not out yet sould be same price]]
Ok lets just get things straight:
- NO overclocking
- General usauge + gaming
- £700 MAX buget, it was supposed to be £600 at the start..
AMD setup:
AMD AM2 Athlon 64 5200+ Dual Core 2.6GHz £81.02
Abit KN9-S, NF550 £46.91
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 £58.33
320MB Leadtek 8800GTS £180.94
250 Gb Samsung SP2504C £37.87
Samsung SH-S203/BEBN £18.20
19" Mirai DML-519W100 £110.20
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit OEM £65.65
Antec 900 £68.02
TOTAL £669.50
Intel setup:
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 £74.84
Abit IP-35, iP35 Express £84.94
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 £58.33
320MB Leadtek 8800GTS £180.94
250 Gb Samsung SP2504C £37.87
Samsung SH-S203/BEBN £18.20
19" Mirai DML-519W100 £110.20
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit OEM £65.65
Antec 900 £68.02
TOTAL £701.34
OPTIONS:
- Drop 8800 for either 8600GTS or X1950
- change CPU?
- pre-built option????
Ok thats what i think the choices come down to. Obviosly the AMD is the cheaper option for around £30 less which leaves money to buy the Prehipherals, mouse keyboard etc etc. The only thing that im not sure about is the graphics cards. Im already £100 over buget and im not sure that the 8800 is woth bieng there. I dont think that the 8600's are really that bad at all and i think they will be sufficient, although then there is the point that the x1950 will do for a year until an upgrade.
argh im just getting more confused now lol, dam mid ranged bugets
Last edited by tigerboyce; 11-08-2007 at 08:50 PM.
I know you're not that keen on the Dell option BUT check the price and spec:
Dell Vostro 200 MT
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (dual 2ghz, 800, 2mb)
Mobo - Intel P35
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
250 Gb SATA 8mb Cache
22" Dell Widescreen TFT (1680x1050) E228WFP
16x DVDRW
Keyboard, Mouse
Microsoft Windows Vista Business
1yr warranty
Dell Total (inc vat and postage): £434
320MB Leadtek 8800GTS £180.94
TOTAL £614
Cheaper and you get a BIG monitor
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Biscuit (11-08-2007)
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