Building A Gaming Rig: Good By Todays Standards?

[OXM_Madman]

I said, maybe in the near future.

I have found what seems to be a suitable Motherboard. Could someone provide a link for the Intel Core Duo 2 Extreme with socket LGA775?

http://www.intel.com/cd/products/ser...eng/326815.htm

And, again, is my component selection from my first post suitable?

[CrazyMonkey]

The Core2Duo Extreme Edition is mega £££ and i doubt you will want to go for that, besides with a simple easy overclock on any other Core 2 Duo processor you can reach Extreme Edition speeds.

[spazman]

NOT any socket 775 board will do, not even every 975 chipset will do. I'd go for gigabyte DS3, E6300, 2GB of ram and x1900/7950gt graphics card.
Although i dont know if this is within your budget (which you havent given ). I'd stay well away from AMD at the moment as they are getting a major kicking from intel (how old was that review that had a 3500+ doing best in games :S)

[dave87]

965/975 are all good, but which one to chose depends on price bracket, which cpu you buy (one of them can reach higher fsb speeds) and feature requirements, I'm sure someone can recommend a good board once you work out which CPU you intend to get

Dave

[amjedm]

Indeed - hence the inclusion of Corsair in my first post

well in that case another vote for Corsair/Seasonic

[timtim86]

It will also be more future proof than the AM2 socket which is seen as a stepping stone, or 939, which is pretty much an old technology now.Dave

The AM2 is seen as a stepping stone?! how come? I just bought myself one

[dave87]

There are two schools of thought - one that AM2 is going to be AMD's desktop platform for the time to come, others reckon, like 754, its time is limited. I think this was all to do with the opteron socket being different, but that has always been the case (939vs940 for example). Only time will tell, but C2D seems to be the best bet for the time being...

[nvening]

mabe if you gave us the buget for the whole thing (inc monitor if applicable) then we would be able to help more effectively

[Rabs]

My thoughts for a 'todays' best price/performance gaming rig:

AMD 3500+ Skt AM2
ASRock ALive NF6G-DVI
1GB Corsair DDR2 Valueram
Palit 7600GT 256MB
320GB WD HD SATA 16MB Cache
Liteon 16x DVDRW
Asus Minitower
Seasonic 380W PSU
MS Wired/Optical Keyboard/Mouse
LG 19" TFT
Speakers (of your choice)

This rig will play everything out nicely and not cost the earth (built 2 of them recently for friends)

*blatant plug* all from Scan Computers (and no I dont work for them - although I applied and received no reply from a job application from them for a technical role - after chasing it up twice...)

[dave87]

What did that come to Rabs?

[Rabs]

My friends had some extras like v nice speakers and some wireless pci cards, should come to something like £650.

Bear in mind, that yes this may not be the cheapest - I could cut off a fair whack - but you get what you pay for

[dave87]

I think I may have managed to beat it

E6300
ASRock DualVSTA
380w Seasonic
1GB Corsair XMS2
NEC Labelflash Drive (18x)
256mb Palit 7600gs
320gb HGST Deskstar
Akasa Zen
19" LG Widescreen TFT

Total - £597.50 - leaving £50 for Speakers/KB Mouse

Dave

[Rabs]

Many thanks for that.

I was mearly proving a point that there is still a market for skt AM2, for people that wouldn't genuinely notice the difference between it and a C2D for gaming.

The rig I specified was a rough guestimate and is actually much cheaper than the one you specified using imo better components (apart from the C2D of course). But hey this is a forum where we agree to disagree

To the OP, assess your budget and post a rough guideline of what you want to spend, at a bare minimum you would go the AM2 route - if you or whoever wish to spend a little more you would go the C2D route

Merry Christmas to all and best wishes for the New Year

[ajbrun]

Assuming his budget isn't tiny, I wouldn't go for anything smaller that 2GB RAM for a gaming machine now tbh.

[dave87]

Many thanks for that.

The rig I specified was a rough guestimate and is actually much cheaper than the one you specified using imo better components (apart from the C2D of course). But hey this is a forum where we agree to disagree

Merry Christmas to all and best wishes for the New Year

Heh, the only component I would change is the motherboard - the rest are equal or better to the ones you specified in the AM2 build eg XMS2 vs ValueRam

Anyhow, Merry Christmas mate

[Rabs]

Equal or better than? Thats a matter of opinion... anyways lets let the matter lie and the OP decide.

Just think of what new toys next year will bring