Help me spend some cash!

Hi all, :mrgreen:

Ok here’s the deal I’m building a new rig and need a little help with the whole AMD v INTEL and ATI v nVIDIA thing. I don’t want to start any fan boys off here; :crazy: I just want to know what my best option is. My budget is around the £900 mark for 2gig of RAM, a motherboard, processor and graphics card. The thing is I don’t know what to go for. If I go for Intel then I can have DDR2 which has a higher frequency but does that matter because the CAS timings are higher than normal DDR? And I want a mini ATX board but it has to be a good over-clocker as well. The rig will be used for gaming so it has to be future proof.

Thanks for any help you can give

Cheers.
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amd over intel for gaming on that budget. ati nvidia as good as each other. ur only gonna get split opinions here

GPU XFX Geforce 7900GT 256MB DDR3 DUAL DVI PCI-E £199.00 lowestonweb.com

CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 + Socket 939 2x 2.2GHz 1MB Cache £247.24 scan.co.uk

Motherboard Asus A8N-SLI SE S939 NF4 SLi DDR400 SATAII Raid GbE Lan USB2 6Ch Audio £70.49 scan.co.uk

PSU 480w Tagan TG480-U15 EasyCon - 2Force Silent Modular PSU £64.61 scan.co.uk

RAM 2GB (2X1GB) Corsair Value Select PC3200 (400) Twin Pack CAS3 £106.37 scan.co.uk

Case Antec P180 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case £82.13 savastore.com

Optical NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer DVD-Writer £29.79 scan.co.uk

HDD 250GB SATA300 Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C (7200rpm, 8MB) - NCQ £65.00 scan.co.uk

Total of £864.63

Don’t think that motherboard is a micro ATX nvening but thanks anyway. I’m going with micro ATX because it’s small and compact. I have the case for the rig already (Aspire micro ATX Q Pack) and I have the HDD (Raptor X) and PSU (Hiper 580) I just need the Motherboard, RAM, CPU and GPU.

lol, i just copyed and pasted it from a system i am specing up now.

I would go for an X1800XT really.. They're getting really cheap now and they handle AA much better than 7900GT..

Either card is a winner tbh ;). For me I'd maybe overclock a smaller, cooler, quieter, cheaper 7900GT ...unless you want a free hair dryer? then go 1800xt :D joke. It depends on your gaming rez too as you won't be using loads of aa/af at super high resolutions with either card in most new games.

X1800GTO OC'ed may be a contender when they arrive depending on price/performance?

Was thinking of the BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC 512MB GDDR3 for the GPU. Can anyone recomend a good mini ATX motherboad, prefrebly the best on the market?

Thanks for all your comments guys.

DFI RS482 Infinity?

Buff that Motherboard kicks ass! Thanks dude. Ill probably get that. Just need a good recommendation for the RAM and Processor now any suggestions people??

Geil make the best value for money RAM about....

www.microdirect.co.uk seem to have the best prices on it.

And I got to second the X1800XT recomendation, the way the ATI cards handle AA is awesome :bowdown: