Less can be more when building a Gaming PC

[Secondgunman]

I have an AMD Atholon 3500+ 64, Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Mobo with 1024 Mb LL (3.3.3.8) Kingston RAM, 2x PCIe Asus Extreme n6800 in SLI, Two Maxtor 16 Mb buffered SATA hard drives (master is an 80 Gb and slave is a 250 Gb) DVD-+R/RW/CD-+R/RW, a DVD/CD ROM, 6-1 SDMC/3.5 Flop drive and a real good Soundblaster ZS 2 Platnium with 7.1 sound card, all crammed into the Thermaltake Tsunami Dream (Silver) with a 480 Watt Power Supply. Some would say this is crazy well all this cost me $2700.oo CND to build, if I had build this as a P4 box I would have been looking at $800.00 or more, even as and AMD I could have spent more on the rig.

What I realy want to know is from other people that realy know their stuff is this more then what I should need over the next two or three years... I feel this is a good system with good future upgrade-ability in some ways it may be over powered at the time but not for to-long. :bounce:

 

[JCinottawa]

What you may need--and this does take the pressure off those who do know their stuff--is the opinion of some one who doesn't know their stuff. After all, it sounds like you do.

This system is solid. As an AMD machine, what else would you do? An FX CPU? Waste of your cash: the 3.5K+ will do the job, which leaves the vid card, which you can later change. As to the choice of AMD over P4, and the A8N-SLI D MOBO, these are a matter of character (leaving $ out of it). First, test results for the 64 are impressive. Second, the design looks right (or at least interesting). Finally, P4-line is running out of gas (its my MBA), and simply put, there is just more scope for imagination with AMD these days--Good Choice.

Now, bring in the hounds!

 

[Secondgunman]

Tks

Yah I have asked a few people that are just getting into gaming and they are responding well. A real boost to my moral came the other day when i found out that my college was have a p.c. power compitition where students could bring their systems in with a printout of their specs and the cost and you could win stuff I came in first in every cat. excluding the P4, because I built AMD...lol and I blew every P4 out of the water the only Intel the beat me was discounted because it was not a PC build it was a Server build used as a PC. I would have come in 2 nd if one other student had entered (he has all the same toys as me other then having 2 GBs of a slightly faster RAM and an FX55 CPU) so I am once again feeling good about my PC building skills and the product that I can produce... Now it is time to hit a LAN party and frag some Peeps in TFC. :knock:

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

What I realy want to know is from other people that realy know their stuff is this more then what I should need over the next two or three years

How could anyone else know what you need?

I'm quite sure that in 2-3 years, there'll be some games that won't play 'smoothly' - but then again, that's a very subjective term.

For example, I'm playing today's games (The Sims 2 and Half-Life 2) with graphics card from 2001, and CPU from 1999.

 

[JCinottawa]

A P3, with an ATI card?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Pentium 3 450@600 MHz (Slot 1) with GeForce3 (Asus V8200).

 

[JCinottawa]

How's Doom 3?

 

[Secondgunman]

Doom 3

Doom 3 runs like a dream on the system, my roommate played Doom 3 and HL2 on my system and his jaw hit the floor it took me 4 hour to pull him off my computer to get back to my homework. I have to of the same Samsung CRTs one for my P4 2.53 Ghz and the other for my AMD 3500 the AMD has 2x Extreme n6800 Ultras and the P4 my Bud's new Ati x850xt well the AMD had the P4 as a light snack and in all reality I think the 9800 Pro All in Wounder I had in the P4 rand Doom gust as well to the eye as the 850 did. I know there was alot of diffrences in my mind but hands down the AMD rig won hands down on both the HL2 and the Doom 3.

 

[BringinHeat]

Thats a really nice set up you have secondgunman, :grinthumb

As far as your latest post your friends pentium 4 based computer with X850XT card is bottlenecked by its CPU, you need atleast a 3.4Ghz pentium 4 or a 3500+ amd to really make that graphics card run. His CPU is almost two years old and he needs to upgrade that to get the full potential of his video card.

Doom 3 is extremely tuned up for all nvidia based 6 series cards and there is no ATI card that can match their performance (yet) when it comes to Doom 3 and even regular 6800 cards are able to beat ATI's top of the line X800 or 850 cards. Here is a link for the information above:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/2004-27gpu2_3.html

As for half life 2 if your friend had a decent processor to run his system the ATI will take any nvidia card even in SLI configuration out (the exception being the SLI 6800 ULTRA where it does beat out ATI's single X850 by 6 more frames per seconds). Just like how Doom 3 engine is tuned for Nvidia based cards ATI made a deal with the makers of half life 2 for their game. And here is a link for the information above:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/2004-27gpu2_11.html

This is by no means a diss to your system just giving you information about the reason for your friend's computer not meeting up to par with your expectations. :wave:

 

[Secondgunman]

wire crossed

It was my system with his vid card, and most of the bench marks for the nvidia cards were done before the gamedrivers were built, I am told that some games with the new drivers run just aswell or more or less the same as the Ati cards. I will have to do some testing on my own for this I have noticed that most testers sway the test in one favor or the other. But yah I am aware of the difrences between the Ati and Nvidia cards, though I run Nvidia like the Ati cards better just when I built the system Ati had no release date set for SLI and I needed to build a high preformance system for my schooling you can only hold out for so-long... Besides when the new SLI Ati cards come out I plan to Buy them and then sell these cards, I may just hold out till the 512 Ati cards come out in SLI, that will have to be seen with time.

 

[Secondgunman]

Sock on Face

So I was saying that I would not put or did not put an FX55 in my rig and i won a FX55 as a door prise at school so now I have an FX55... I will use is oh how I will use it but it is not needed buy me I will use that because you don't have 1G in pure CPU power fall in your lap for the cost of a $5.oo door fee evryday... So I will use it. :bounce: