New Rig HELP!!!

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peterock

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I guess I'll start with what I already have. I have a new antec 900 case a Muskin 650w psu, dvd drive, Western digital 10,000 hard drive and windows xp I'm looking to get a 2 core duo (which one??) I'm thinking e6750 only because the e6850 is like 80 bucks more and I'm not sure it's worth it. As far as motherboards I was looking at the Asus P5E, should I get this one? I like the fact that It will accept the up coming processors and it works with the new 2.0 pci express cards. The other one I was looking at was a 680i board but have read many bad reviews about them. I'm also looking at the Muskin ddr2 1066 with d9 chips ( 2gigs). This is only my second build and I intend to use this for the soon to be released Crysis and COD 4 and I want it to be fast. If any of the above that I have said is way off or wrong please help I have around $1000 budget
 
if a grand is your budget, then i wouldnt go all out on the processor. crysis is not as cpu intensive according to the benchmarking tests. i believe there are several other new games that are more gpu than cpu stressed. so id spend more of your money on the ram/ gfx card end. OBVIOUSLY you want the as good a processor as you can afford, but its really what your goals are for the rig
 
For a gaming rig, the CPU is not your main concern. The GPU should be the most important thing on your mind right now. I suggest a motherboard you could easily upgrade with. PCIe 2.0 cards are still mighty expensive, so I would stick with PCIe X16 as their bus speeds are at least 30% faster than AGP 8X. But if your budget only allows for an AGP, don't count them out yet. There are still companies (Nvidia included) who are still making killer gfx cards for AGP.

Next, what operating system will you be using? If you are going to use Vista, you will Need a PCIe card with DX 10. You can still run DX 9 games, so don't worry that you will leave your favorites behind.

Next is memory. Keep in mind that the FSB tolerances for memory vary widely even in motherboards of comparable prices. AMD and Intel boards seem to need different types of memory for similar speed processors, so do your homework. I would suggest either Corsair, Kingston (with a life time warranty) or OCZ. They are slightly more expensive than their competition, but are worth every penny when squeezing every ounce of performance out of your rig.

And make sure your case has good air flow. If this is an mATX case or MiniATX, I would suggest big powerful fans at the front and back; one to pull air in and another to push it out. Some heat spreaders for your memory couldn't hurt and think about getting a PCI slot cooler to suck all the heat off of the video card. You could even replace the stock cooler on the GPU with one quite a bit better. Just be sure that the cooler will fit the cards layout.

The hardest part about building a computer IMHO is planning everything out and timing your purchases so that you take advantage of sales and rebates. After that you just hook everything up, install the software (MB drivers first, then upgrade them) and your off.

Send a post with your final specs. :D
 
Why whats wrong with Muskin ram???? I also already plan on getting a 8800gt 2.0 pci express. I really need help with a motherboard and proc selection
 
Your processor, memory and motherboard seem to be in good order. How much does that leave you for the video card? The 8800GT is an excellent card for the money. It costs about $250.00 and is 3/4 of the power of a 8800GTX.

Don't worry about Vista or AGP or any of the other stuff people have brought up.
 
Thanks Will a 8800gtx fit in a antec 900 case? Does windows XP support direct x 10 or is that just vista? The motherboard I listed above is something new to me and the market as well I believe. The P5E from asus says something about accelerated ram speed or something like that but I also think it says something about it having to be DDR2 1200 to be utilized. Does anyone know anything about this? It also says it supports PCI express 2.0 , will regular 16x pci express cards ( 8800GTX ) work in this board. I tried looking on Asus's web site but with no luck could find the answers. They might be there in black and white but might be written differently then what I think I'm looking for. As I said this is only my second build so I'm a newbie in need of help. Thanks
 
The card should fit in the case. The case isn't huge but the card should miss your hard drives by an inch or two. DirectX 10 is supported in Vista only. I found that "Super Memspeed" is their method of supporting DDR2 1066. The motherboard natively supports DDR2 800 but when DDR2 1066 is installed the board automatically makes memory setting changes to support the memory at it's full speed. Most overclockers don't like the motherboard to make memory speed decisions, so the feature can probably be turned off. PCI-E 2.0 doubles the bandwidth to your video card if the card is 2.0 compliant. The 8800GT is 2.0 compliant but that will probably not make that much of a difference in frames per second, but it would be really cool if it did! PCI-E 2.0 is backward compatible with regular PCI-E, so the 8800GTX will work in that board.

The P5E motherboard is Crossfire compatible. You may wish to wait for the new AMD/ATI video cards to come out on November 15 before you make a video card purchase. Crossfire is an easy way to boost a video systems frames per second when dealing with screen resolution of 1280X1040 and larger. Neither the 8800GT or 8800GTX are Crossfire compliant.
 
Your parts seem to be fine. If you're planning on overclocking, grab the GigaByte GA-X38-DQ6 from here and a Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 2GB kit instead of the ones you've currently chosen.
 
The black set of DIMMs comes with LEDs attached while the yellow ones don't. Either should give you the same performance, but black ones will be prettier.
 
Not with that motherboard you won't. You'd need an SLI motherboard with an Nvidia chipset to do that. The P5E is based on an Intel chipset and is Crossfire ready. You may want to purchase an Nvidia 680I based board if you don't want to spend a bunch of extra money later.
 
that board is great. memory your getting is is sweet from what i know about d9 chips thay overclock really well. the 8800gt a 640 or 320 flavor? i hate the fact the the new p35 chipset is only crossfire ready. the new 45nm cpus would be sweet to use on it. 8 cores? lol!! cant wait. nvidia chipsets would be all the better with DDR3 and 45nm cpu support. =^(
 
I'm a real dumb ***** I'm just realizing that X38 chipsets are all crossfire. I already have the 8800gt on its way. Does anyone know of a motherboard that supports 2.0 pci express?????
 
ok my bad, again, 14 hrs of sleep in 72 hrs. the GTS is what i was thinking, or seeing. who knows, my brain feels like mush right now. lol.
 
The 8800GT doesn't need PCI-E 2.0 to work. It will work fine in an ordinary PCI-E x16 slot as well. IMO, get this mobo and save yourself some trouble. It performs on par with a 680i-based mobo without having the heat issues the former has.
 
PCI-e 2.0 doesn't yet bring much performance improvement to the table. Most tests of the 8800GT are done with PCI-e 1.x capable motherboards & there seems to be little to no difference with a PCI-e 2.0 motherboard. Btw a nVidia card will word fine in a Crossfire ready motherboard, you just won't be able to use SLI/Crossfire if you get a 2nd card.
 
peterrock, i have a gigabyte board in the 478 socket flavor, running a p4 2.4@ 3.2Ghz on air, gigabyte makes a solid board. good choice. heres an intresting thing, 680i nvidia chip sets will in the future support 45nm cpus. guru3d obtained a beta bios from nvidia that allowed them to use the new Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad-Core Processor ie. 45nm cpu =^) heres a link showing thay got a beta bios, http://www.guru3d.com/article/processor/471/2/ so dont limit yourself to a board other than 680i. im building a box for a client with that chipset. i can assure you the south bridge gets HOT!! north bridge is no slouch when it comes to cranking up the degrees either. I ran superPI mod for 8 hrs with no hiccups with a x6800@ 3.4 on air. as hot as thay got, nothing crashed or was unstable so.... TV components get hot like that too. tvs run forever for the most part. car stereos get extremely hot with out a problem i wouldn't worry about the heat issue unless you have poor case ventilation.
 
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