Help me spend some cash!

[Darth_Spud]

Hi all,

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; 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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[Merlin4458]

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

[nvening]

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

[Darth_Spud]

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.

[nvening]

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

[sawyen]

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

[Rhyth]

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 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?

[Darth_Spud]

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.

[BUFF]

DFI RS482 Infinity?

[Darth_Spud]

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??

[shaithis]

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