Look at this setup with a 6600GT... for under $450. Comments?

[lostfuze]

Well I ordered a 5700LE video card for my PCI motherboard, and now im starting to regret it. I have a p.o.s emachines. If I get some good feedback on the system below, I will probably return the crap PCI card and get the stuff below in 2 weeks.

So all day i've been researching on how I could put together a new computer for under $450. I'll be using the 60GB HDD and DVD/CD-ROM Drive from my eMachines with it.

Here it is...

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+
- Before you call me crazy, i've read by many people that this thing overclocks to a 3200+ REALLY good. Only $75, and if it isnt fast enough I can always upgrade later on.
Price: $75

Motherboard: ASRock VIA KT880 Chipset for AMD Socket A
- Researched this thing, and it has all of the features I need. Though I am a little confused by how the AGP slots work.
Price: $45

Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB DDR3 AGP 8X
- This is all I need.
Price: $198

Memory: pqi 184-Pin 512MB PC-3200 & Rosewill 184-Pin 256MB PC-3200
- The mother I chose supports up to 4GB, so I can easily upgrade in the future. 768MB should be great for me now.
Price: $87.98

Case: CODEGEN ATX Mid-Tower Case
- Looks great, and has A 350W power supply. I'll have to upgrade that in the future, but other than that its exactly what I want.
Price: $34.50

For under $450 I have a feeling this is what I need. My Windows XP will be purchased from Amazon.com with a gift certificate.

Can you guys tell me if its worth it to get Windows XP Pro or just stick with the home edition?

Thanks, ANY feedback would be appreciated. Remember, this has to stay under $450.

fuze

 

[isatippy]

Do not go with the asrock board it is crap. You should go with a Asus, Biostar, or Gigabyte. This one would be good for but it costs a littile more $66 usAsus M/B But if you want to go cheaper this one would do fine to for $52 USGigabyte M/B But it is all your chose. :hotouch:

 

[vnf4ultra]

build

Have you used the 5700le yet? I mean you can't expect it to be a 6600gt, but it should be sufficient for most games if you turn them down a little. Anyway if you are going to build another computer, this motherboad seems good.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-180-039&depa=0
Check all the good reviews.
I don't know if the powersupply in the case you chose is very good. It probably will work. It has the lowest +12v amperage I have ever seen, 12amps. Most good psu's have 25+amps. I don't think asrock is total crap. I think it's made by asus, a good company, and is sort of like their value line.

 

[lostfuze]

Well the 5700LE will be here tomorrow according to UPS Tracking # so i'll give it a try before I go crazy and buy all of that stuff above.

But, just incase it sucks...

Can you guys tell me if i'm better off getting an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ or an Intel Celeron D "320" 2.40GHz? They are both the same price, but the AMD is considerably lower operating frequency.. but the AMD has a 512K cache and Celeron D has a 256K. What matters when it comes to the CPU? The AMD will overclock to a 2.2GHz... and has 512K cache. Would that be better than a 2.4GHz with 256K cache?

Also, can anyone explain what DIMM Dual channel is? The motherboards I see that are 3GB and 4GB support this, but im not sure how it works. Can you use any RAM in these, or can you only use all 4 slots if you have special dual channel RAM?

Thanks again

 

[shadow_29]

hey lostfuze..great so you're finally considering a new pc.good config for a budget performer.first thing dont go with the celeron,it will really disappoint you,you can blindly go for the athlon xp 2500+ but if you do decide to overclock it know that you'll void your warranty probably and also get some good heatsink and cooling solution/fan either from zalman or thermalking(only if you are planning to overclock it)but you'll be satisfied with it at its current clock speed and stock cooling solution.two, you'll have to check newegg but i remeber that the geforce 6600 gt(agp)was available with 256 mb(ddr2) not 128 mb like you said so look around and find out if 256 mb is available for that price with the ddr2 interface,gddr3 would provide only negligent real world performance boost,ddr2 interface should be cheaper.

good luck

 

[vnf4ultra]

computer

Someone told me that the celerons are 30% less powerful than pentium 4's. That means even if a pentium4 and a celeron are both 2.4ghz, the celeron will be 30% slower(I.E. equivalent to a penitium 4 1.68ghz).

Athlon processors have slower actual speeds, but perform similarly to intel p4 processors. For example, I have an amd athlon64 processor @1.8ghz. It is called a "3000+" which means that even though it runs at an actual speed of 1.8ghz, it's efficiency makes it equivalent in performance to a pentium 4 3.0 ghz. So the amd 2500+ is like an intel pentium 4 2.5ghz. A celeron would have to be a 3.55ghz to equal a athlon 2500+ if the 30% decrease is right. The celeron is overpriced for it's performance, or lack thereof.

 

[vnf4ultra]

ram

DIMM is dual inline memory module. It simply means memory stick. dual channel is when you use two memory slots sort of like one memory stick to get better performance. If you have 2 memory slots, then you can put 2 matched ram sticks in and run them as a pair in dual channel. The mobo should auto detect that it is a dual channel pair. 4 dimm slots means you can have 4 memory sticks running as two pairs. The 3gb/4gb thing is just the maximum amount of ram that you could have if you fill all the memory slots. You should use ddr 400 ram(pc3200) with a new motherboard.

 

[lostfuze]

Cool, well after scraping together some Xbox stuff to sell on eBay(Steel Battalion and 5 other games) and hopefully my eMachines being sold for $250(I can only hope)... I would have enough to add another 512MB stick of RAM, 120 GB HDD, DVD-RW Drive, and a 17" LCD monitor to the stuff posted above. That adds up to like $810 with shipping.

I'm pretty excited, but I think im getting my hopes up a bit. It would probably take a good 2/3 weeks to get everything if it goes as planned.

Plan: Try out 5700LE, send 5700LE back, put a bunch of stuff on eBay, have money in a week and a half, order from NewEgg, order WinXp from Amazon. Sounds too easy. :\

 

[vnf4ultra]

new system

Sounds good. Hey, could you benchmark the 5700le once you try it with aquamark3, and maybe just give us some ideas about how it handles the games you try? There are a lot of people like you that have only pci slots, and I usually recommend the 5700le, because it's about the best you can get for pci, but I would like to know how good/bad it actually is. I think it would have to be much better than integrated.

 

[shadow_29]

hey lost fuze.that's quiet a plan you got there.just wanna say.....

good luck

 

[vnf4ultra]

system

I was in the same situation you were a little while ago. I have a dell 2300, which only has pci slots, and I was going to get a 5700le to replace my intel extreme graphics, but my integrated graphics can't be disabled. I thought of getting a new mobo, ram, xp, agp card, but it ended up being about $400, so I said, hey I'll just build a whole new computer, $400 is half way to a new system. That's what I did. I got a case, amd 64 3000+, nforce 4 ultra mobo, pci-e 6600gt, ram, monitor, etc. Total cost was 907 shipped.(I got some really good deals on black friday, 17"crt for $50, keyboard+mouse for $10, modem free $0, dvd burner $60, 160gb hd $40) I used Newegg for the rest, they are great, cheap prices, good service, good selection, fast shipping. And now I have a good gaming system that is pretty future proof (I know this does't exist in the computer world). The nforce 4 ultra chipset has a good many new features, like pci express, sataII, native command queing, possible support for future dual core amd64 processors, 64bit ready(xp pro 64bit). Now I have 2 computers, my old one for internet, im, school work, and my new computer for games, dvds, music, etc.