New System Advice

[planetgong]

Hi guys(and gals!)

I'm thinking of building a new system at the moment. I really want it to be an excellent gaming system, which can play all the new crop of games(Doom3 etc) and is futureproof too.

Not really got a price limit in mind yet, so give me all your ideas so I've got something to think about. I've not bought a new system in a while, so I don't really know what the best processor/graphics card etc is at the moment. And what is the best VFM?

Right, hit me with it!!!

[BUFF]

Hi guys(and gals!)

and is futureproof too.

no such thing - you just have to accept that whatever you will buy will be out of date in 6 months.

imho best value for money now is an NForce2 board with an Athlon XP-M Mobile but there is no upgrade path past that.

[BenW]

Well, AMD 64bit (939), 1GB DDR2 RAM, PCI-Express X800/6800 when its available which i would guess won't be too long

[mike_w]

Well, AMD 64bit (939), 1GB DDR2 RAM, PCI-Express X800/6800 when its available which i would guess won't be too long

That's pretty much what I would recommend. But my main piece of recommendation right now is: wait. Although you could always be waiting for the next piece of technology that's just around the corner, I think that there is quite a lot of new stuff that's just come out or coming out, like Socket 939, PCI-Express, the new generation of graphics cards, DDR2, etc.

If you want to future proof your system as well as you can, I don't think you'll want to buy a Socket A CPU since they're nearing the end of their product lifecycle. Socket 939, on the other hand, performs brilliantly, and will be around for a while so you can upgrade in the future. But you should wait for the prices to come down since it is pretty expensive at the moment!

If you do go for Socket A, I thin you're best off overclocking a Mobile Barton 2400+/2500+ on an NF7-S, but like BUFF said, you can't upgrade with that in the future.

[Kezzer]

Why would you want to get DDR2? The latencies are absolutely terrible at the moment. It's worth researching before recommending.

[nichomach]

Erm..he could always go for a mobile XP2400 now, get one of the cheapie Asus boards found by ERU (http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=24785), choose decent memory, graphics etc and simply replace the CPU and motherboard later, as S939 solutions fall in price?

[malfunction]

Erm..he could always go for a mobile XP2400 now, get one of the cheapie Asus boards found by ERU (http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=24785), choose decent memory, graphics etc and simply replace the CPU and motherboard later, as S939 solutions fall in price?

That's what I'd do - £23 for the mobo + £55-60 for the XP-M... Get some DDR1 with low latencies if you can afford it... Then whatever GFX card you can afford. Don't forget to get a good PSU to power it all.

[planetgong]

Thanks for the advice guys. Those mobos look a bargain. Quick question - what's PCI Express?

[nichomach]

Expensive. Seriously though, it's a new interface standard brought in to replace PCI and AGP; should bring performance benefits, but it's hardly been implemented yet. Not an essential.

http://www.pcisig.com/home

[planetgong]

Ok thanks mate. Have been having a look at the XP-M chip. What is best value, the 2400 or 2500? Which overclocks better? Any anyone know the cheapest place to get hold of one? I presume they can be installed in a standard ATX mobo?

[BUFF]

If you want to really do it on a budget 1 of these will do 2.3-2.4GHz.

Other than that I would probably go with xp-m 2400+

For a case how about this

Don't forget a good PSU - I recommend the Tagan 480W which will carry over to an AMD64 system nicely.

edit: this is a decent HSF for the combo

[joely]

Im commiting the cardinal sin and going for a 754 chip and mobo but im an impatient bugger and i figure that the price of a mobo is nothing compared to the rest of the bits, athlon 64 here i come