Building a gaming rig

[skittle]

Lokking to build a new system for gaming for the first time and I am in a dilemma. Should I go for Core duo or an AM2 dual core. I have about £800 to spare and this is the set up I am thinking of:

MSI 7900GTO 512MB DDR3 DVI TVO SLI ready PCI-E
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 Socket AM2 2.2GHz 1MB 1000FSB
Asustek AM2 nForce 570 SLI ATX Audio Dual Lan DDR11
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX (2x1GB)
Western Digital WD2500KS Caviar SE 250GB 7200RPM SATA2/300 16MB Cache -
Sansun Galaxy ATX Full Tower Gaming Case with 500W PSU
BenQ FP91G+ 19" TFT 8ms 550:1 (1280 x 1024) DVI Monitor Silver/Black 3 years warranty

Any opinions appreciated

[mr_yogi]

Core 2 Duo all the way!

[thepassenger]

mr_yogi said:

Core 2 Duo all the way!

Agreed. The various Core 2 Duo processors seem to have the endge in price Vs performance.

[road2ruin]

I have to agree, sadly. As the prices are almost identical now for core duo v am2 go for the duo.

[thepassenger]

skittle said:

BenQ FP91G+ 19" TFT 8ms 550:1 (1280 x 1024) DVI Monitor Silver/Black 3 years warranty

Other thing, get a Widescreen display. Most modern games support it and once you go widescreen with the PC you'll never want to go back.

[mr_yogi]

Yep, Widescreen monitors are great

I've just got one as my CRT died and although FPS take a bit of getting used to racing games are FANTASTIC

And like passenger said nearly all new games have native support for widescreen, in fact it's one of the requirements for Microsofts new Windows gaming standard

[TUS 373]

I have got behind on what's what with the latest crop of processors. If going for the Intel Due Core, what is the current pick of that crop in terms of value for money.

Also, the processing speed quoted e.g. 2.4 MHz on these dual cores - does that mean the total "processing power" (OK there will be other factors involved like FSB) = 2 x 2.4 = 4.8 MHz?

And further....when I have built PCs I like Abit / Asus / Gigabyte boards. What would be the recommendation there for a good board that will keep up with other tech developments for 3 years or so?

Thx

[mr_yogi]

You can’t simply multiply the number of cores in a multi-core CPU by the speed of the processor, as most current applications are not multi threaded, and therefore only use one core. Even applications that are multi threaded rarely achieve more than a 50% improvement unless it’s a task which is very predictable and scaleable, for example file compression. Having said that if you multi task then Dual core is very useful

As has been mentioned recently on this forum the speed on a CPU is largely irrelevant unless comparing CPU's of the same family (NOT manufacturer).

As for the best value Core 2 Duo, they all preform very well, but obviously the faster you go the more you have to spend to get a smaller increase in performance. The best of the bunch is probably the E6600 (£220ish) but the E6400 (£160ish) is also a good preformer and keeps up with the £400+ AMD FX-60 in most application. The E6300 good value too at about £130.

For motherboards look at intel based motherboards but make sure they support the Core 2 Duo, as the Core 2 Duos use the same socket (and therefore MoBos) as the old P4s. Unless you want the option of SLI with nVidia GPU's in which case I think the only option at the moment is the ASUS P5N32 SLI SE(only the SE version will work with the Core2Duo) at about £130 or the more expensive version based on the new nForce 590 chipset.

Edited by mr_yogi on Friday 27th October 16:40

[TUS 373]

That's wunderfuel - thanks for the information. It usually takes me 50x longer to choose components that it does to build a PC!

Thanks again.