Please help spec X2 rig for MMORPG

[sprog]

I would much appreciate comments on this proposal as we are trying to put together a decent rig to replace an ageing and room-warming Asus A7N/3200+/Radeon 6800 Pro system. I am pretty hopeless with a screwdriver, so will get a friend to build or go with Tekheds, Over-Clock UK or similar. (We are London-based – has anyone used Epsilon in Tottenham Court Road?).

It will mainly be used for MMORPG gaming – specifically Second Life – plus creating some 3-D models in Paint Shop Pro.

Budget is circa £1000 without monitor, keyboard etc. (slightly more than anticipated!) with the aim of creating a fast, reliable, reasonably quiet system.

I don’t want to go over the top on spec, but prefer dual processor because it’s the way forward, though we don’t need a second graphics card and will not be playing FEAR. Will not overclock - hence value memory?

I have added the X-Fi for 2.1 sound quality. Currently sound ouputs through an Arcam amp and Acoustic Energy speakers

Thanks!


Gigabyte 3D Aurora case- Black £74.95

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (939 Pin) - Retail with Fan £196.50. Presume Manchester?
Or OEM with Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro

Asus A8N-SLI Premium (Socket 939) Motherboard £106.95

Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 SLI Power £82.00

Corsair ValueSelect 2GB (2x1024MB) PC3200 CAS3.0 £122.00

XFX GeForce 6800GS 'XXX' Edition (485MHz GPU) 256MB DDR3 Dual DVI/VIVO (PCI-E) £143.50

Sony 16X DVD-ROM Black £12.76

NEC 4550A 16x DVD±RW Dual Format 8x Dual Layer Black - £27.60

Samsung SpinPoint P120S 200GB SATA2

Modem 56k V90/92 Internal PCI

SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

[Nox]

I would forget the sound card, and put that money towards a 7800GT or GTX. These days, onboard sound is actually half decent.

You can also overclock the CPU fine, but you might not be quite as flexible by selecting value ram.

Nox

[shaithis]

If your not going to add a 2nd gfx card, nor overclock, you could save some money and buy a non-SLI motherboard.

Other then that, the spec looks good, although stretching to a 7800GT would be nice

The soundcard I would be tempted to say "Stay with", especailly if you use comms software while playing.......I have seen MANY problems with onboard audio, MMORPGs and comms software

[Zad]

I'd say drop the X-Fi and get some G.Skill ZX memory and a 7800GT factory-overclocked graphics card with the cash you save. The X-Fi isn't *that* much better than Creative's cheaper range, but the 7800GT *is* that much better than a 6800. Corsair Value Select can be good, but can be awful too, it seems to be the luck of the draw.

I'm not sure why you are going with a separate DVD player and recorder either, if it's for copying then it's more reliable to do it via your hard drive. Which, by the way, you should be able to get 250/300Gb for not much more than the 200GB.

[RDL]

Looks good but one thing I noticed; you gona be playing on 56K?

[iranu]

No reason to have a 600w psu either. There are plenty of psu's that will do the job of powering that system for under £60.

Drop the DVD rom drive - no point.

Ram is fine - there's little point in going for very expensive ram unless you plan to overclock. AMD systems don't suffer too much of a penalty with ram running on a divider.

Why not drop the soundcard and see if you are happy with onboard sound first? If it's poor you can always upgrade later.

With the money saved buy a 7800gt or an x1800xl. These can be had for @£190 now. Scan was advertising http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=282163 for £190 last time I visited.

Nice case, I have one of those and it's pretty good. Lot of room and good accesories for cable management.

56k for things like WoW is not good. 512k broadband would be a minimum requirement imho. You will only suffer lag, disconnections and frustration on a 56k modem.

[RDL]

I don't see the problem with having a DVD ROM and DVD RW. I myself use this combo - for an extra £13 of course it's worth it.

[sprog]

Just to clarify, I will not be using it myself as its for my grown-up daughter!

I primarily use a G4 DP Mac, so the spec is on the basis of a lot of on-line research plus reading and re-reading my subscription copies of the excellent Custom PC and PC Pro.

For that reason its nice to know that I'm on the right track, so many thanks for these pointers so far.

The hardest part was to define the hardware requirements of the Second Life MMORPG (created in OpenGL) as there is very little out there apart from refs to Pentium 3 and MX card etc as minimums - with hardly an AMD reference in sight. Indeed I may well have considered the Intel route if the Yonah derived Core chips were established, but they're not so I am pretty confident that we are doing the right thing with X2 for multi-processing.

I will probably stick to the Value ram because, as mentioned above, we will not overclock. The 7800 card is tempting but pricier so I am still weighing up the options.

On the subject of modems, no we are not relying on 56k (nor an array of several) its simply a back-up. My daughter was an original triallist with BT ADSL, so we started with 1 meg, got cut back to 512 and a price increase (thank you BT) and now have the 2meg line.

The Alcatel router and Buffalo air station are linked to the PC and I pick up the signal downstairs thanks to an Orinoco card that is exactly the same spec as Apple's. At the time I was pretty amazed that I managed to set it all up ....and it works like a dream.

I take it that the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro makes sense?

I could go for the 500w Seasonic but they are very close in price.

[Zad]

The standard heatsink/fan is fine on the retail pack X2/3800. Even though it's overclocked by 20%, mine tops out at just 38C. Retail packs also have the 3 year guarantee, rather than 1 for the OEM.

I'll say it again because it's worth repeating. Ditch the X-Fi and spend the cash on a 7800GT. Even dropping to the Audigy 4 OEM version would liberate 40 quid. On a graphically intensive app like an MMORPG, the most important component is the video card.

If it were a car, it would be like a racing driver trying to choose between 25% more power or go faster stripes down the side of the car. It really is that clear a choice.

So that would be £40 saved on the sound card, £12:76 for the DVD-ROM, get a Hiper 580 PSU instead of the Seasonic and save another £20. £72:76 + £143:50 = £216:26

[fredered]

I would agree with whoever it was said that you dont need the asus premium board, if you wont buy a 7800 series then the chances of you ever economically using sli are small [one 7800 is far better price to power than 2 6800s] and the only other realy advantage of the premium is overclocking and as you are doing none of that a chaper nf4 ultra board would be better choice in my opinion, as you won't notice the difference in normal operation it's only advantages are overclocking. If you do want to keep the sli option open get a cheaper sli board saving you a bit of money. I would agreee with Zad that the retail HSF is fine, even at full speed mine isnot audible above my fairly quiet case fans

[ed^chigliak]

I'm really very happy with the ASrock dual 939 motherboard at only £40. SLI is something you do straight away with two high end graphics cards or not at all. To add a second graphics card later as an upgrade will make no sense because when the time comes the next crop of graphics cards will already outperfom two 'old' cards. Don't spend money on SLI unless you need it.

A 7800GT / X1800XL is affordable if you spend less elsewhere on the system. The £70 extra Asus vs ASrock doesn't buy you very much imo. The performance difference between mainboards is tiny so it's far less important choice than the graphics card.

I have the Seasonic 500W PSU, 3700+, freezer 64 pro, 7800gt, asrock dual 939, valueselect RAM, 250gb spinpoint. It's a nice gaming setup whithout being overly expensive.

[b0redom]

I got an SN25P Shuttle box for my folks. It's reasonably small and quiet, the motherboard is intalled already and the cables are already routed for you. My folks have never put together a PC before, and they managed it!

All you need then is RAM, graphics card CPU, HDDs and optical drive.

Cheers...

Tom

[sprog]

She will not be able to differentiate between Value RAM and TwinX but you may have a problem with the 2405.