Pure Gaming Machine Round 3

[Weng]

Hey guys I’m back, looks like the X800 XTs PE are finally starting to come out and I'm here with a new comp list, just hoping you guys could once again have a look, let me know what you think and give me some advice! really do appreciate it, Hexus Rocks, cheers guys

Lian-Li V-1100 Aluminium MIDI Black
£175.08 inc from Aria

Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL Pro TwinX (2x512MB) CAS2 (MY-050-CS) £230.89 inc from OC

AMD Athlon64 3500 [2.2,200,939]RET
£241.99 inc from Aria

ASUS A8V Deluxe
£88.13 from Aria

Two 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10K
£130.43 from Aria

Tagan 480W Low Noise Power Supply
£71.97 from Aria

Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 XT PE
£370.13 from OC

NEC 3500 Black 16X Dual Layer DVDRW
£57.87 from Aria

Razer Viper 1000 Professional Gamer Mouse
£29.99 from Play.com

[mike_w]

I'd actually get rid of the Radeon and get a Geforce 6800 Ultra. They both seem pretty close right now, but the Geforce has the more advanced features (Shader Model 3.0) so it could pull ahead in the future.

[Platinum]

Yep defo go for the 6800 Ultra

[Stewart]

Well, thats very much a matter of opinion, personally I'd stay with the X800XT-PE.

As for the rest, its pretty ninja, and ninja is even better than l33t, so thats some machine, ma nizzle.

Just a few notes - the Asus A8V Delxuxe has issues with the PCI\AGP lock, just small issues like... it doesn't have one and the versions to correct it don't work. Little niggles, you know.

Anyway, the v2 should correct this, or you could go for a different board. Are you going to be overclocking?

Tagan PSU? Nothing wrong, but maybe something like an Enermax Coolergiant, Antec 550 or a PC Power and Cooling would be more suited to a high end rig?

I'd get a Boomslang 2100 over a Vyper, but if you must have optical...

No cooling apart from fans? If you've got some cash to splash, maybe go for a pimped out phase change unit? MachII GT would be good. Or at least some watercooling. Again, you might not be interested in overclocking though.

Finally, RAM - most people's first choice is the OCZ 3700EB stuff. Have a look.

[Weng]

Hey guys thanks for your input!

I have been thinking about getting a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra and do see the potential of it pulling ahead in the future, I found this review quite interesting http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra.../doom3-08.html
also heard that these cards have a problem with Far Cry but I think they are sorting it out with patches.

Vaul how come you would stay with the X800XT PE?

lol also don’t like the idea of the Asus A8V Delxuxe having a few niggles like, so could be a change of board any suggestion?

Also not really bothered about overclocking yet like and I’ll give the them other psu’s a look!

The Ram I choose was due to all the reviews I had read give it top marks, haven’t heard much of that other ram so if someone could give me a few links of reviews would be more that grateful!

[Mblaster]

The Abit AV8 is a great S939 motherboard. I have it and have never experienced a problem (apart from my first one was broken). Also I have heard nothing bad about it from anywhere else.

[Stewart]

I'd stay with the X800XT-PE because its a superb card, that more than holds its own against the Ultra, wins its fair share of benckmarks, and I'm sure will run Half Life II as well or probably slightly better than the 6800Ultra, in the way the Ultra had an advantage with Doom III. It doesn't really matter really, no card is a bad choice, have a look around, see what you can get at what price, and get the cheapest..

I think the best baord out at the moment for 939 is the Asus, and if you are not overclocking, its the board for you. The PCI\AGP lock issues are a problem if you want to overclock though, but the v2 should sort this out.

Nothing wrong with the Corsair stuff, far from it, but most do recommend the 3700EB from OCZ as the best choice for AMD64 CPUs.

I paid £320 for my X800XT-PE by the way, for £370 I hope you are getting some games with it.

[Weng]

lol 320 nice, could i ask where you got it from? and is it the PC3700 Dual Channel Platinum Edition EB-DDR i should be looking at just having trouble looking for reviews?

[novajoe]

i got my Sapphire X800XT PE VIVO retail for £346 inc VAT and shipping and it came with:

Sapphire booklet (setup up guide)
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (Full game)
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Full game)
Driver catalyst CD (of course )
CyberLink PowerDVD 5, 2ch (dunno what 2ch means just says it on cd, 2 channel maybe)
CyberLink PowerDirector 2.55 VE and
Redline overclocking tool CD

Plus came with a bunch of cables which do various things (for example s-video, so you can hook up tv)

plus the box looks cool

also imho i perfer the X800XT to the 6800U's because of the superior design of the card, and the fact that is performs equally aswell as the 6800U, apart from maybe Doom3, but i wouldnt kno because i havent played it on a 6800U, but i play it on 1280x1024 (cos thats my monitor max ) 16xAA on Ultra Q and its perfectly smooth, so unless it takes a dive in 1600x1200 i dont really know why people make such a fuss about it (only a few fps afterall)

but the 6800U is still a great card and people say its more availavle but i still think its pretty hard to find the quility brands such as XFX

[drunkenmaster]

it will be very difficult to physically feel or see the benifit of two raptors in raid over 2 dm9+'s in raid, of if you want to spend a little extra dm10+'s in raid. I had to 300GB dm10+'s and it was damned fast. I bought them for storage though, just wanted to check the speed in raid briefly. The raptors won't be much ahead. After moving the dm10+'s to another computer i went with a raid 0 on dm9+ 120gb sata's and they are very nippy, more data and cheaper.

I'm still waiting fora 3year warranty home version of the raptor from someone like maxtor. Seagate and western dig have always had relatively poor raid performance, ibm(now hitachi) was king for raid setups, and maxtor aren't far behind them.

The rest is fine, the a8v is also pretty good for overclocking, mine would go to 260Mhz fsb fine. My gigabyte nf3 chipset doesn't go as high due to mem being at 2.7v. But overall i'd buy any 939 board bar the msi board.

XT PE or 6800 ultra, i couldn't choose, tbh both are pretty much even spread out across all benchmarks and get whichever you can get cheapest IMHO.

You also have the option of a GT and overclocking it to 6800 ultra speeds, or a x800 pro vivo and modding it to x800 XT PE, full pipelines and xt speeds. PSU i would opt for a little more and get the OCZ 520W. Only the 520W as it runs fan on load base using not temp, so fan will stay quieter at same usage than if you had the 420 or 470 version.

[Stewart]

The PCI\AGP locks working on your board were they mate?

[novajoe]

The PCI\AGP locks working on your board were they mate?

/me wonders what that means

[Platinum]

Both vid cards are good, 6800 If you like your Doom III, XT if you like HL2, but TBH both sre so insainly fast you woulnt even notice the 5 - 10 odd FPS difference.

[spazman]

Id go with the 6800gt save the £100 odd quid and get 200gb hard disk for storage, because the raptors are going to want to be saved for all those games

[bouncin]

how much are these 6800 gt.s now?

lowest price i could find would have saved me £40 over my x800xt pe.

saying that i also found a 6800 ultra for £340

[ed^chigliak]

As far as I know
Lowest price for the 6800GT is £250 dabsvalue which is Connect3D although they never seem to have stock.

The cards I think are worth a little extra $£ are BFG which is factory overclocked. The XFX cards because of the dual DVI. The galaxy glacier because of the custom 'quiet' cooling.

If the card is bundled with DOOM3 for free then it's atleast the price of the game more expensive so no suprises there.