New gaming PC: What first?

[Coontang]

Hey.

I have currently planned out a gaming rig i will be able to buy in full in around march.

It consists of:

coolermaster 330 case
700W Arctic Power PSU (2 rails at 22A per)
Gigabyte something or other SLI board (750i something , if you need the name just ask)
AMD Athlonx2 6000 @ 3.1ghz
4GB OCZ RAM
Single 8800GTS card
500gb HDD 32mb cache (been said to be good as/faster than raptor)
20x dvd drive

The pc tots up to a suprisingly low £400 (imo). I know Intels are supposedly better but for an SLI board (more on that in a moment) and a decent proc (8400) it costs about double the AMD option (mobo and CPU).

I will be buying a second 8800GTS when they drop in price, as they are currently doing VERY well in benchmarks in SLI.

The frist thing i would like to know is if anyone has any improvements.

Mainly, I could buy the 8800GTS at christmas, and continue saving to buy the rest of my system.

Ive got a sempron 3300 2ghz, 1 gb ram and a 450w psu.

I would like to know if i should get the 8800GTS soon, and buy the rest later to put the [what would be] current 8800gts in.

I dont want to damage the card with underpower or whatever. I think it would run stable, obviously with bottlenecks from the rest of the rig, but bottleneck are just slower performance, not actual damage?

[Coontang]

Relook at the market in March - 3 months is a long time in the world of PC

thats something i forgot about. is there anything scheduled for release?

[Infinite]

Sam's righto n this one. I bought my computer for $1000 usd and it had this:

300W psu
3GB DDR2 ram (not sure of the brand or clock because i've never looked at it tbh :s)
8400 GS 256mb
Q6600 intel core 2 duo @ 2.4ghz

I bought it December 11th, 2007, and if you look for a computer for abotu the same price nowdays you can get a lot better for about half the price as it would have been a year ago. I just googled a computer which is made by the same brand (HP Pavilion) but its the newer version and this is what i found, http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8009477085 , and if your too lazy to click it, it has these specs:
AMD Phenomâ„¢ X4 9750
8GB PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM
ATI RADEON HD 3650 512mb


anyways, I don't look at future releases due to the fact that new products are made every day in the pc world xD. I wouldn't be suprised if there's something like a 360 gtx in 3 months .

[helium]

First of all, I would wait if I was you (as I said on Xfire) Mainly because what you're buying is 2006 stuff, and for just £100 more you can get a PC that almost performs TWICE as good, and you will definitely regret buying a dual core in near future. I know it's hard, but try to be patient and get some more money and you'll get a better PC.
And btw, you don't need anywhere near 700W PSU for that setup.

Here's what I recommend:

Case: Anything you want actually. Take something cheap if you don't want to spend a lot of money.
PSU: Corsair Powersupply 650W - £74
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz - £132 (Note: BUY A FAN FOR THIS, the original SUCKS.)
RAM: 2/4GB OCZ RAM (32-bit XP can get up to MAXIMUM 3.5 GB so useless to buy 4GB RAM if you have 32-bit.) - £66
GPU: ATI Radeon 4870 - £210
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD502IJ 16MB 500GB - £50

Total: £531

And this is a PC that will be rated as a PC above average for at least 2,5 years.

Overclocking: I have the Q6600 2.4GHz and I have clocked it to 3.0 and now it performs A LOT better (obviously) and I had no problem at all clocking it and it's 95% safe to do it.

Also, I overclocked my GPU with 70 MGz in GPU clock and 200 in memory clock and also that performs a lot better.

Ahh, now I put more than 10 minutes of work into this post (getting sad) so I'll stop here and hope that you know what I mean and hopefully you'll listen to some of it

[Infinite]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115017

in USA/Canada/China a Q6600 is apparently cheaper than where you guys live xD. ($190 = £127) and there's another one on there for $180 (£120) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115018 and that one has free shipping xD.

[Coontang]

Ok, I'll try talk it from another perspective, not my original aim but I think it would be useful to express my view.

I AM wanting a new computer. I have been wanting a new computer for a long while now. This one is just too slow to keep up, I cant use vista cause ive got 1gb of DDR1 ram which is at like 300mhz. The PC wont be for nonstop full resolution gaming. I also dont want to spend until this time next year, probably longer, saving, cause thats just not fun. I could have a nice speedy computer (A HUGE amount better than this one) for a smaller wad of £400. I DONT want to spend any more than this, and I dont want you to reply saying 'you will have to unless you want to buy another', because I bought this PC just before dual core came out, and, I mean, I cant see technology moving on so fast that I will NEED a quad core in 2 years. I know that technology moves fast, but I cant afford to shell out yet another £200 or so so i can have an intel system. Im sticking to £400, and im sure that will get me above the performance im expecting.

To be honest, I love my gaming, but I arent looking for crysis at full res with anti aliasing and the works. The problem being my system right now is just at the verge of making things unplayable completely (absolutely lowest settings I find a lot of games extremely unplayable.). I just want something fresh, something new, and this lump of sh*t next to me gone.

Now, back to my original questions, I should wait until march to buy my card? I would love to buy it now, but what of todays technology will be £120 in 3 months? I arent a big ATI fan, I much prefer Nvidea because it is all i have used, and I think they support the games I enjoy better. Also, the 8800GTS i think is a great choice, even when I first got my 6600 I was disappointed but I'm sure I wont be let down with an 8800GTS.


EDIT: The 8800GTS isn't the most recent card but i think this speaks for itself:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gami ... 6,745.html

EDIT 2: what about the 9800GT? Ive found the BFG OC edition:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148491

[helium]

Oh shit yeah, I forgot the MB Well, honestly I don't know superduper much about motherboards but buy a motherboard that supports PC-8500 RAM's. To be safe, you can buy the one that I have (since it works more than fine) P5Q, P45.

Oh and I found the Q6600 for such a cheap price on a swedish website called prisjakt (pricehunter if you translate it to english) there you can find which website sells stuff cheapest, but unfortunately it only shows swedish websites, but if it would show american websites as well you would find it even more cheaper.

Oh and about the CD-rom, buy one for about £10 if you want, but if you forget to buy one (like me) you can just take the one from your old PC

Btw sam did you overclock your CPU yet?

[Nightmare]

Just installed my GTX Over Clocked 260.

[Infinite]

Just installed my GTX Over Clocked 260.

:O!!! is it worth it?

[Coontang]

Hey, I've been speaking around and wouldnt mind a couple of stuff being wrapped up

I have been thinking about upgrading my current system piece by piece until i got my full system. My case is fully compatable as far as i believe (i will post a link if i find one).

SO FAR i would replace the current pieces in my pc with:

gigabyte SLI Ready board
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/113844

AMD 64x2 6000+ @ 3.1ghz
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149211

OCZ 4GB RAM
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146049


Firstly, would this result in my PC actually working better and not exploding?

The voltages of my ram and motherboard I dont quite understand , one says 1.8 one says 2.1. If you read the 2 links can someone explain whats going on?

Third, is the SLI board a good SLI board or should I just get a single pci e board? I was planning on getting another card at a later date, when the price drops, but I dont know if this is a cheap quality SLI cboard or if i should get a better quality single card board.

ALSO, if I shouldnt choose SLI, what is the best single card performer for £100-150?
Thanks.

[Marshall]

I'll post up my rig in a new post

If you need help PM me.

[Nightmare]

Just installed my GTX Over Clocked 260.

:O!!! is it worth it?

All the way, I can play FarCry 2 with all Ultra and get 60 FPS.

[Infinite]

Just installed my GTX Over Clocked 260.

:O!!! is it worth it?

All the way, I can play FarCry 2 with all Ultra and get 60 FPS.

nice . Can't wait till i get mine and play gta4 xD.

[Marshall]

Running 2 HD4870x2's is nice too