Summoning all users, I need a bitta help ;D

[unreal]

Hi all,

I had a mate who came round yesterday, who saw my fairly average spec system play BF2, and now he really wants a performance pc.

Ok ok I keep up with the times etc so I don't think I'm a complete newbie to this, and I have built about 15 PC's to spec. But this situation is kinda puzzling me.


Hes given me the budget of £600 MAX, so I want to spend around £550 as a safe boundry. I have chosen most of the things, such as case, RAM, PSU, etc... but... there is a sale on Overclockers.co.uk, with a 128mb AGP 6800 GT for well under £200 (a nice Asus one). Why the hell is it so cheap, or is it because it's 128mb? However I am well aware of before that VRAM makes virtually no difference, so is it a good plunge?

Also I realised the older Athlon 64 socket 754 or whatever they are, are far cheaper than Socket 939. I know the benifits of Socket 939 is PCI-E, Dual Channel RAM, higher upgrade path, and SLI if I chose the right chipset. However my friend wouldn't really need and notice those things, but I still can't justify why its so cheap compared to it?

So should I take the more expensive, (but worse performance) path for him and choose a PCI-E system with a Athlon 64 3200 and 6600 or something, or pick a DFI LAN Party Socket 754 with Athlon 3400, and 6800GT 128mb? I personally asked him what his upgrade expectations will be like, and he specifically said he wouldn't really plan to upgrade it in the next 3 years.

You could say I have already made the decision, but I guess I also needed clarification from other experienced people to see if I am walking into a trap or something.





Ok heres the parts just incase you are interested.

Asus V9999GT/TD GeForce 6800 GT 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail - Price: £124.95 (£146.82 Including VAT)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 CPU Cooler - Price: £11.95 (£14.04 Including VAT at 17.5%)

AMD Athlon 64 3400 32/64Bit CPU S754 Newcastle Retail - £106.34 (£124.95 inc VAT)

512Mb PC3200 (PC400) DDR Memory (Major Elixir) Retail - £21.37 (£25.11 inc VAT) x2

Aero Cool JetMaster Jr. Black ATX Gaming Case -No PSU - £29.95 £35.19 inc. VAT

Aspire Acrylic 550W PSU with Black Base - £17.95 £21.09 inc. VAT

NEC ND3540 16x+R 16x-R Dual Layer DVD Writer -Black- - £26.95 (£31.67 Inc VAT)

120Gb Maxtor DM Plus9 8MB Cache ATA133, 7200rpm - £42.95 (£50.47 Inc VAT)

DFI LanParty UT nF3 250Gb (Socket 754) Motherboard - £55.95 (£65.74 Including VAT)

Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Twist Handle Retail (He wants this) - £18.87 (£22.17 inc VAT)

MSI PC54G2 Wireless IEEE802.11g PCI Card Adapter - £13.95 £16.39 inc. VAT

Thanks in advance all Hes got speakers, mouse, keyboard, and monitor already accounted for.

[DavidM]

Socket 754 doesnt need dual banked memory.

[unreal]

I know but 512mb sticks apparently have better latencies than 1gb sticks, so I might aswell get two sticks of 512mb.


Also thats another thing, I read somewhere that Socket 754 needs registered memory or something like that? (Not too clear on it)

[nvening]

You can get a 256mb 6800GT for £200, OCUK is crapola

[sawyen]

nop... not really... older FX series needs tho... FX-51, FX-53 all needs ECC reg memory... but not A64 in general... pretty nice combo... would probably stick wif one GIG of memory rather than a pair of 512... nice area of improvement should u ever go 2GB

[unreal]

You can get a 256mb 6800GT for £200, OCUK is crapola

I've had good luck with OCUK so I'm going to try and still buy from them for now


Thanks for the RAM info aswell, thats a relief

[noah]

again id go with 1 stick of 1gig ram, i have a similar setup and it seems the sensible choice given the upgrade potenital as memory is an easy and very noticable upgrade when its needed, 2 gig may not be that far off as the norm.

[unreal]

Thanks, cool I will change that to a single stick of 1gb then for now, yea i see its a very sensible decision

[Rave]

I had a look at OCUK's site since you want to buy from them. Your combination of CPU, Motherboard and Graphics card costs £337.51 inc. VAT. For £374.65 you can get a S939 3000 Venice, an Abit A8N-SLI, and a 256MB Asus X800XL video card. That's less than £40 extra for a S939 CPU, PCI-E motherboard (that's SLI capable) and a video card with 256MB of memory- and when you're running at high resolutions with the details turned up (which you should be with a 16 pipe card) having 256MB of vid card memory does make a difference.

You'll have to overclock the CPU a bit to get it up to the same speed as the S754 3400, but there's a very good chance that you'll be able to do that. As for memory, just go with the 2x512 for now, you can always sell it on if you really need to upgrade to 2GB (which TBH I doubt you will any time soon).

[sawyen]

and 3000+ venice clocks pass 2.6Ghz like a breeze... probably more when you're gonna use NF4 boards...

[Rave]

An overclock to 2.6GHz is by no means a given, but you'd be a bit unlucky not to make 2.4GHz. Thanks to the dual channel memory the S939 system will match the performance of the S754 3400 at a slightly lower clockspeed anyway, say 2.3GHz.

[iranu]

Spend less on the case and more on the PSU. A £15 case ain't gonna catch fire a cheap 550w PSU is more likely to. A good 400W is better than cheap 550W. e.g. Tagan 380W can be had from OCUK for £44.

Go S939 - CPU city are doing 3000+ venice OEM for £85.79 here. Most places do retail inc fan for £100. OCUK is expensive imho - shop around.

I like Scan, Microdirect, Tekheads, Komplett, Ebuyer, CPU city,

1Gb of ram is a must these days for gaming and ram is very cheap atm.

Currently I'm looking at building a system for a mate for under £500. and have

Motherboard Gigabyte K8NF-9 £67.05
CPU Athlon 64 3000+ £100.00
Cooler Retail 0.00
Ram Geil Value 2x512mb £62.26
Grafics Card Gainwood 6600GT £113.92
TV Tuner
Sound Card Onboard 0.00
Power Supply Tagan 380W £44.06
Hard Drive Hitachi 160Gb £57.56
Floppy Old Mchine 0.00
DVD ROM Old Mchine 0.00
DVD RW NEC 3540 £35.00
Case Old Mchine 0.00

Total £477.85 inc p&p